


In the Forest

by deputymercury



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Body Horror, F/F, Humanstuck, Kanaya is a cryptid, Kinda?, Rose-Centric, Slow Burn, adding tags as I go, the prompt was cheesy and I turned it dark. oops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-06-24 01:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15619809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deputymercury/pseuds/deputymercury
Summary: When Rose stumbles upon a fearsome creature in the woods, she finds herself both unnerved and intrigued. But as she attempts to befriend the cryptid and unravel its mysterious origins, she discovers more than she bargained for.





	1. A Stroll in the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose goes into the forest for a picnic, only to discover that something is already feasting there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick TW for body horror and animal death (not onscreen, but body is described in detail). Read at your own discretion.

It all starts the evening Rose finds the dead doe.

Oftentimes she ventures out in the woods behind her house, if only to get a breath of fresh air. Today her mother is hosting a dinner party with some fellow scientists. Rose knows there will be an empty seat for her at the table, always to the right of her mother. She knows there will be fine silverware-- with three forks per person-- and a thoroughly ironed, expensive tablecloth. She is even more aware of the hired chefs, who make the whole meetup look more lavish, but are only brought in because her mother does not know how to cook anything beyond spaghetti.

Rose never deigns to sit at these dinner parties. She hasn’t since she was a child and didn’t know any better. Her mother never expects her to, at this point. But being in that house is nearly suffocating, sometimes: her mother and her coworkers chat, their laughter echoing up the stairs, as if asking Rose, _“Your mother seems so nice-- why aren’t you here?”_

It’s all too much. At times like these, the forest is her solace.

Rose pulls a water bottle from the side pocket of her backpack and takes a long, slow sip. The brook not five feet beside her flows along, zigzagging between the crooked trees until it is out of sight. Its gentle gurgles are a familiar, comforting sound. But today there are no birds’ calls to harmonize with it, only a gaping silence where their chitters and laughter should be. Rose frowns and wipes a smudge of black lipstick from the mouth of her water bottle, then continues on her way down the brook.

The weather is perfect-- just warm enough that Rose doesn’t need a jacket, but cool enough that she can wear layers. She looks down at her clothes: overalls over leggings and a T-shirt. Her mother once pointed out the outfit in a magazine and declared it looked ‘sorta tacky;’ so naturally, she had to have it. It helps her feel more like herself.

The setting sun sends long shadows stretching across the woods, painting the carpet of orange and brown leaves with criss-crossed stripes of black. Rose reaches into the pocket of her overalls and fishes out a flashlight. She will need it soon if she wants to see, not because the dark frightens her. Rose has never been afraid of the shadows, though she knows that what may lurk within them can be dangerous. Yet the more deadly, the more fascinating, she thinks.

The sun has set by the time Rose reaches the landmark: a moss-covered boulder, looming at least eight feet tall. She switches on her flashlight and moves past the rock, away from the babbling brook and towards a gnarled oak. Its thick branches stretch across the sky, blotting out enough stars to make the constellations unrecognizable. The ancient wooden treehouse hidden in the oak’s boughs is barely visible from Rose’s place on the ground, even with the flashlight. She traces the outline of the treehouse with a beam of light until she catches a glimpse of the rope ladder, then moves her flashlight down, at last finding where it begins.

Rose has not told anyone about this place; her mother would insist the treehouse is unsafe and would go about remodeling it in her usual over-the-top fashion. It feels like too much of a sacred spot to tell her friends about it, either. Besides, only Jade would think hanging out in a dilapidated treehouse isn’t lame, and she would ask to see it. Rose can’t have that. She regards the treehouse as her hidden sanctuary, where she can write and read and do as she pleases without her mother breathing down her neck and mocking her with whatever overly extravagant gift she’s decided to bring that day. In this case, she’ll be eating dinner here; nothing says ‘soothing’ quite like a solitary treehouse picnic.

Rose puts the flashlight between her teeth to keep her hands free and grips the nearest rung of the worn rope ladder. The light briefly shines upon a pair of initials carved into the tree: V.M. They’re nothing new to her. She has already researched the past owners of her mother’s mansion, and none of them have had a corresponding name. It only serves to enhance the mystery, if you ask Rose. Especially at nighttime, where it’s just her, and the ladder, and the cool, gentle breeze--

_SNAP._

Rose whips her head around to the noise, the flashlight illuminating a hunched figure previously hidden in the darkness. The first thing she notices is the creature’s height; it has to be at least six feet tall, with two horns stretching out from the top of its head. Whatever muscles it has left are tensed up, but most of the beast is emaciated skin and bones beneath clumps of black fur, the ribcage clearly visible under sickly grey skin. Clutched in its gnarled claws is the remains of some large animal--deer? Moose? She could not be sure--already torn half to pieces.

The creature stares at her almost agape. Its two sunken green eyes are wide as saucers and its blood-stained mouth is wide open, revealing half-chewed chunks of meat enclosed by razor-sharp teeth. What alarms Rose the most is the shredded remains of cloth clinging to the beast’s frame-- a black rag around its torso, and some tattered blue material encircling its chest. Once she realizes, she gasps, and the flashlight drops from her mouth.

As if broken from a trance, the creature sprints off into the dark, faster than a bullet despite its frail appearance.

“No, wait, come back!” Rose shouts, though she knows better than to think it will return. She’s not so certain she even wants it to. “I won’t hurt you!”

Nothing but the echo of her own voice, and then only silence. Rose sighs and reaches down to pick up her flashlight. She blinks once, twice, trying to focus. Did she just see that? Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe she has been outside for far too long.

No, Rose tells herself. The creature was eating something. She could go over and look at the remains of its prey. Suppressing a shiver, she shines the flashlight in the direction of the dead animal as she takes slow, tentative steps towards it. A doe, by the looks of it. She gags at the sight of its entrails strewn about, all torn and bloody because of the beast. If the creature could do something so horrible to a doe, then what about her?

“Stop thinking about it,” Rose whispers to herself. She steps closer still to the corpse and tries to take a breath, only to find herself overwhelmed with the stench of rotting flesh. The doe was killed recently, she guesses, so the odor must be from the creature. It fills her with both revulsion and fascination. She has never encountered something so terrifying and enthralling all at once. The possibilities flood into her head once she takes off her backpack and pulls out her journal, already struck with the urge to record everything before she forgets it. Rose takes the flashlight in between her teeth again so she has both hands free for writing.

First is a sketch of the creature, complete with its various attributes labeled in scrawled, looping letters. It’s not as neat as her usual handwriting, but Rose does not have the time nor patience to care. Her hand starts to cramp up. She keeps writing until she gets every last detail down, from the repulsive stench it left behind to the asymmetrical shape of its horns-- the one on Rose’s right curved up, then down, as if someone had folded it at the top.

She looks up once she’s done. The forest is louder now that she doesn’t hear only blood rushing in her ears. The brook continues its gentle murmurs, and quieter still is the sound of crickets chirping. Here and there Rose can even hear an owl calling out. It would be peaceful any other night, but not now, not with the corpse of the doe barely fifteen feet away from her. She doesn’t even feel hungry enough to eat the sandwiches she brought. All Rose wants is to go home.

But as she slips her journal back into her backpack, Rose has a revelation. She pulls one of the sandwiches from her backpack; it’s in a Ziploc bag clearly labeled ‘Turkey.’ It takes a few minutes of fishing around in her bag to find a Sharpie, but once it’s in her grasp, she scrawls a message onto the bag and then slips the marker in before sealing it.

The beast will be back for its kill; surely it would not let an entire doe go to waste. And when it returns, it will find a gift. Rose tosses the bag as close to the corpse as she can get it, wincing once it hits the side of the doe. And with that, she turns around, following the brook back to her home.

She hopes it will respond. After all, the creature was wearing clothing, however tattered, which had shocked her at first but now gave her hope. Perhaps it had been human at one point.

*******

Tired.

Heavy.

Hungry…

She stumbles through the woods, her belly gnawing at her just as it always does. It is never sated. Only once did she feel something close to satisfaction in all this time of wandering the forest. And she will never feel it again. She will not stoop that low.

The doe is where she left it, thankfully. There are a few chunks missing here and there, thanks to some various scavengers, but for the most part it is intact. She remembers the look on the girl’s face once she saw her digging into the corpse. It was shock, of course-- who wouldn’t be surprised?-- but beneath that, almost a sort of curiosity.

She will avoid the girl, but she will not forget looking into those lovely lavender eyes. It is a pleasant memory among all the horrid events now. When was the last time she felt happy? It was ages ago, surely. The world before her curse feels like a dream. Maybe she will feel good again if she can see the girl. No, that isn’t right. She will hurt the girl if she gets too close.

Walking on unsteady legs, she moves to the body of the doe and braces herself. It is painful to transform into the more bestial version of herself, but it is easier to forget what she does when in that state. Easier to forget what she resorts to in these desperate times. She usually doesn’t stray this close to civilization, anyway. It is important that she keeps her distance.

But before she can summon any energy to switch into the gruesome version of herself, she notices something laying on the ground. It’s a little baggie labelled ‘Turkey’ with a sandwich and marker sealed inside. Below the label is a message.

 **I’m sorry for frightening you. I hope this is proper compensation. -** ****R. L.** **

She picks the bag up, pulling at the opening with trembling fingers. It is hard to remember the last time she used one of these. At last she pries the bag open and inhales. The sandwich smells like cultivated ingredients she’s been foreign to for so long. Turkey, of course, and the sweet white bread, and something tangy...honey mustard? It’s too difficult to resist, to wonder if the sandwich might be poisoned. She devours it in giant, desperate chunks, then licks her fingers off. Of course, she is still hungry. She is always famished; that is just part of her curse. But it fills her with warmth to taste something from the world she is no longer welcome in.

Maybe she doesn’t need to look at the girl again; it is too dangerous for both of them. It would not be too much to express her gratitude, though. She pries the cap from the marker with a soft  _pop!_  Her hands shake as she tries to write the message, only to scribble it out because the words are impossible to read. She remembers a time when her handwriting was neat and simple and earned her compliments from friends and teachers alike. Now it is barely legible, what some might categorize as ‘chicken scratch.’ But it will do.

She deems her fourth attempt good enough, but wonders if she should sign it with her initials. Even her name is distant; there is no one around to call her anything, and she is not the girl she used to be. But beneath all the dirt and blood and grime covering her, beneath all the horrid deeds and grit, she knows her name. She may as well put it to use for the lavender-eyed girl.

 **Thank you for the food -** ****K. M.** **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I'm very excited to bring this fic to life. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I have fun writing it. In my opinion, there's not enough Rosemary content out there. I will try to update whenever I can.
> 
> Prompt/AU can be found here: https://smallmetal.tumblr.com/post/158415328688/rosemary-au-where-kanaya-is-a-cryptid-that-lives


	2. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose finds a clue that may lead her to the identity of the creature in the woods. Kanaya receives a gift she never thought she'd have the pleasure of seeing again.

Rose is distracted during school the next day. She stares out the window, eyes glazing over, then frantically scrawls something down on her paper. It’s a wonder her teachers don’t notice the odd cycle. By the end of the day, her assignments and scrap paper are covered in tiny speculations about the creature, along with the occasional doodle of its face. Every now and then she receives an odd glance from people sitting near her in a class, but Rose doesn’t pay them any notice. In high school, escaping judgement is impossible; she may as well accept it.

Her friends notice her absent-minded state. They’ve all known each other for years, so it’s no wonder.

The first is Dave, unsurprisingly. Rose knows there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to her cousin, regardless of what his cool exterior makes him look like to other people. She engages in her usual banter with him during English, but it’s full of pauses and breaks, enough to let Dave know that something’s going on.

“Rose, really, you’re off your A-game today. Like, you did an acrobatic pirouette off the fuckin’ handle and hurled yourself to the goddamn exosphere. Wonder if they give Olympic medals in space for that kind of shit… Would say you’re dead because of the lack of oxygen, but hell, the clouds around your head seem to be keepin’ you chill to the max.”

Rose dismisses his concerns with a nod and a few sharp words. “I believed you were the cool one around here, Mister Strider. Or have I finally surpassed you in aloofness?”

It’s Jade who notices next. The two sit together in the library during lunch in order to avoid the crowds. She wolfs down her slice of pizza, then notices the way Rose is staring apathetically at her packed lunch, as if watching paint dry. “Rose, you okay?” she asks through a mouthful of pizza crust.

“I’m alright. I merely had a strange dream last night,” Rose retorts as she tentatively picks up a slice of apple. “What about you? Did you dream about anything?”

Jade’s eyes light up. Rose knows this is her weak spot. She merely smiles as her friend goes on and on about flying above a golden planet and waving to all the little people on its surface.

John picks up on it as they dissect a frog in biology. It’s Rose’s turn to wield the scalpel, and she seems rather unaffected, even as she cuts through the stomach of the frog. John taps her on the shoulder, and she whirls around, scalpel in hand. He puts his hands up in the air as if he’s about to be arrested. “Whoa, whoa, calm down! Gut the frog, not me!”

Rose’s shoulders drop, but the tense energy is still there; it’s obvious from the way her foot taps against the ground. She stares at John. “Is there something you need before I go back to cracking open our Kinder Frog Surprise?”

John snickers, and Rose can’t help but smile. She likes hearing her friends’ laughs; Jade’s starts out light and cute but then turns into guffawing and snorting; Dave’s is reserved but grows to be a lively chuckle if the joke is good (or absurd) enough; and John’s is usually a cross between braying and wheezing, all while he is trying to hold back tears.

The teacher glances over, probably wondering if one of her students is having an asthma attack due to all the noise, and Rose gently tugs at John’s arm, signaling that they should get back to work.

He wipes at his eyes and grins. “That was really dark, Rose.”

“I certainly try.” She goes back to making the incision, her posture more relaxed now.

“But I was gonna ask you… You seem kinda off, you know? And Jade and Dave told me that, too. Is everything okay?”

Rose nods, then realizes if she can admit her dilemma to anyone, it’s John. She’d never tell anyone about the creature in the woods, of course, but mentioning the doe carcass would help to get some of it off her chest. Jade would want to go hiking in the woods with a rifle if she brought it up, and Dave might want to see the deer so he could collect the remains for his weird collection of dead shit in jars, artistically titled, ‘They’ll Be My Side Chicks in the Afterlife.’ John, on the other hand, has never been much of an outdoors kind of person.

She continues to gut the frog as she speaks. John takes notes on the biology worksheet all the while, nodding his head occasionally to let Rose know he’s still listening. “I went hiking in the forest yesterday when I stumbled upon the mutilated carcass of a deer. It had suffered multiple lacerations on its belly, and whatever attacked it must have been attempting to...well, for lack of better words, pull its guts out.”

John sticks his tongue out and grimaces. “Eww, gross! Did you see what did it?”

“No. And for that reason I believe I should avoid venturing into the forest at night.” Rose cleans off the scalpel and places it back in the box. John looks up from his paper and fixes her with a tired, disbelieving look.

“You say you aren’t going into the woods again, but what I’m hearing is that you wanna find out what had enough power to tear up a deer like that.”

“Perhaps.”

“ _Rose!_ ”

The bell rings, and students quickly shuffle out of the classroom. Rose and John follow them, backpacks slung over their shoulders. The hall is full of throngs of students all pushing to get their way to the entrance. Funny how no one is that eager to enter the building, Rose thinks.

“I don’t know much about the woods, Rose, but anything could be in there. Just make sure you don’t get beat up by Bigfoot, alright? I can’t have one of my good friends in a coffin this early. Hell, we haven’t even become a motorcycle gang yet. Do you know how upset Dave’s gonna be about that?!”

Rose snorts. “You have nothing to worry about, John. I can assure you of that much. And I think I speak for the both of us when I say that only Dave and Jade are interested in riding death machines with wheels.”

“You got me there. Well, see you! Don’t get killed by an ape!” John waves at her and rushes over to his bus, where a group of his other friends wait. Rose watches as Terezi wraps an arm around John’s neck and gives him a good old-fashioned noogie. Karkat yells something incomprehensible but furious at her, and she merely cackles in return.

“Apes don’t even live this far north,” Rose mumbles under her breath, a small smile on her face.

The bus ride home is uneventful. In front of her Rose can hear Nepeta talking to her tall friend-- what was his name again? Eric? Equine?-- about the exercise regiment she wants them to go over together. Jade has the window seat, since her stop comes after Rose’s, and she’s reading a book.

Rose pulls out her journal again. She’s all too eager to run home and check if the creature responded to her message. If it did, that proves it is human-- or once was, at least-- and is capable of basic motor skills. If not...maybe she shouldn’t go into the forest again, or it may not be able to restrain itself enough to not slaughter her instantly. But curiosity killed the cat, didn’t it?

“Hey, what’s that?”

Rose’s head shoots up.

Jade is pointing to the drawing of the creature. Rose tenses, then forces her shoulders to relax. “It was from the dream I had. I told you, remember?”

“Oooh, looks scary! You know what kind of monster that is?”

“I’m afraid not. Perhaps it was merely conjured from my imagination.” Rose closes the journal and stuffs it into her backpack.

“Well…” Jade trails off and taps her fingers against her leg in that way she does when she’s trying to come up with an idea. “Oh, I know! My grandpa has a dictionary of all sorts of creatures from legends. It’s a huge book, and super old, so I can’t bring it to school, so… How about a sleepover? Maybe we can find out what type of monster you dreamed about.”

Rose considers the offer. It won’t hurt her to give the dictionary a look, and anyway, she hasn’t stayed over at Jade’s in a while. “I’m open to that. Are you available this Friday night?”

“Always am!” Jade grins.

The bus lurches to a halt at Rose’s stop. She waves a good-bye to Jade, then steps off the bus and down the paved road to her home. The sky is cloudy as usual, and a breeze caresses her hair. It’s hard to believe that something paranormal could be lurking in the forest, right by her home, when everything else feels the same.

She opens the door and is met with yet another wizard statue. Its tacky, leering grin seems to mock her; Rose sidesteps away from it and into the foyer. She finds herself practically jogging towards the stairs-- almost there, _almost there--_

“Hi, honey,” a smooth voice calls out. “How was your day?”

_Shit._

Rose’s mother stands at the top of the stairs, a martini in one hand and a pastel pink GameBoy in the other. Her thumb flies over the buttons; her gaze flits from Rose to the screen and back again. She’s dressed in what Rose dubs ‘business casual’: a lab coat, jeans, and a [T-shirt](https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--LiB991_V--/t_Resized%20Artwork/c_crop,x_10,y_10/c_fit,w_461/c_crop,g_north_west,h_626,w_470,x_-5,y_-53/g_north_west,u_upload:v1462829018:production:blanks:ekerz3afkzxin2pgqj8h,x_-400,y_-378/b_rgb:eeeeee/c_limit,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_630/v1518955646/production/designs/2371636_3.jpg) depicting Gudetama lounging around while saying something depressing.

“It went smoothly,” Rose replies. “How was work?” What she wants to say is _you’re home awfully early._ But that would break the little game of mock sincerity she has going with her mother.

“Oh, it was, y’know, the usual. Some bozo came in askin’ about how his experiment code was going all sorts of whack, so I offered to help, and he was all like--” she does a gruff pantomime of the man-- “‘Listen here, little lady, I don’t need no help from a woman.’ And then tried to tell me off just ‘cause I’m a bio major! Like, can you _believe_ the nerve some people have?!” Her words in anyone else’s mouth would sound angry, but Rose’s mother recounts her day as if it was an amusing story. “So then I told him about how I double majored in computer programming, and that shut him up real quick...”

“I see.” Rose begins making her way up the stairs. If she can distract her mother long enough, maybe she can cut the conversation short and go to her room.

“Also, I got a promo. Sweet, right?”

Rose freezes. “That’s...wonderful, yes. In what department?”

“Genetic factors regarding internal diseases, and how we can fabricate parts of the tissues in order to spread healthy cells that promote the overall well-being of the organ. Or some shit like that.”

“Interesting.”

“I know! And since I got the pay raise, I went and bought you a new casual dress. Your old one still has that stain at the bottom of the skirt, so I figured you might want something better.” Rose’s mother beams.

“Thank you, Mother.” Rose smiles back, though she feels as if she wants to scream. One-upped yet again! What can she possibly do to combat this move? “I’m grateful. So grateful, in fact, that I’ve decided I will cook us dinner tonight.”

Rose’s mother claps her hands. “Oooh! I’m excited to see what you’ll make. You know how much I love surprises.” And with that, she strolls on down the stairs, humming a cheerful tune occasionally interrupted by, “Come _on,_ Gardevoir! You got this in the bag!” as she presses buttons on her GameBoy. Only when her mother has retreated to the kitchen does Rose let out a sigh and head upstairs to her room.

She spares the neatly folded dress on her desk a glance, then flops down on her bed, burying her face into the pillow. Despite all Rose has done to keep up her cool exterior, she panicked. And now she’ll have to waste time cooking dinner instead of checking the woods for the creature she witnessed last night. That’ll be simple enough-- garlic shrimp with rosemary bread. What frustrates Rose is that she could not conjure up a better solution in enough time.

There could have been an easier gift to make, she thinks as she sits up and stares at the accursed dress. It is a simple black sundress, perfect for casual outings. Her mother knows her too well and not enough at the same time. It makes the gears in her head start to turn, though, as she glances over to her dresser and allows herself a small, sly grin.

“Thank you, Mother.”

Rose has an idea.

***

The weather is cool, but what Rose adores the most about it is the blanket of fog draped across the forest. It brings her a sense of ease as she follows the brook into the woods, a backpack over her shoulders and a spring in her step. The birds’ calls and faint rush of water from the brook bring a peaceful sort of ambience to the forest. Otherwise it might be too eerie. Rose finds it calming. No wonder people listen to recordings of nature to soothe themselves, she thinks.

Past the boulder and towards the treehouse she goes. To Rose’s surprise, the doe has vanished; not even the bones remain. Rose suspects the creature returned to drag it off into the woods. Yet the faint rays of sun hit a plastic bag lying upon the ground, and she rushes towards it, eager for an answer.

The sandwich is gone, but the baggie has sustained no additional damage, and the Sharpie is still inside. Rose carefully picks it up and looks it over, her eyes widening once she notices the sloppy response written below her own message. The creature is intelligent enough to communicate... but how did its claws not tear the bag apart? She gives it a second glance, only for her gut to twist.

There is a single strand of black hair inside the bag.

Rose knows it would not mean much to anyone else, but her mother is a biology major who often works in the field of genetics. Her equipment will be able to analyze the sample, if Rose can get her hands on the tools. She pulls off her backpack and slips the baggie into it, then pulls out the gifts she’s brought for the creature today. It is a long shot, as she doubts the it will return after being scared off, but even the tiniest sliver of a chance is good enough for Rose. It is better than nothing, at the least.

She lays the gifts down and makes her way back towards her home.

***

“So, Rose… What’d ya do at school today?”

This is one of the reasons why Rose hates cooking. On a good day, her mother will fetch some fast food or make pasta and promptly devour it. Rose will lurk at the top of the stairs until she’s finished, then quietly creep to the main floor and eat whatever her mother had left out for her. But when Rose cooks, she has no choice but to immediately acknowledge the food, resulting in a family dinner.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Rose says before taking another bite of shrimp. “We dissected a frog in biology today.”

“They still make you kids do that? Geez,” Rose’s mother remarks before taking a sip from her wine glass. “Who’d ya work with? Who was--” she leans towards Rose, her eyes bright-- “your accomplice in this heinous crime?”

“John.” Rose dips her bread in olive oil but continues to make stubborn eye contact with her mother.

“Yeah, speaking of him… he and your other friends haven’t hung around here in a while. Y’know, you should have ‘em over! I’ll make my special meal for them,” she declares, waggling her fingers as if casting a spell.

“Spaghetti,” Rose deadpans.

Rose’s mother grins. “See, you get it. You know what kind of master chef I am.”

Rose pulls her book out from under the table and opens it up, setting it in front of her plate to end the conversation.

***

When Kanaya returns to the spot she killed the doe at yesterday, she finds three plastic bags.

The first two are smaller and contain sandwiches, one labeled ‘Ham’ and the other ‘Turkey.’ She notices no other notes on either of them, so she promptly tears the bags open and devours what’s inside, licking her fingers off afterwards-- the past version of herself would think it to be disgusting, but hey, it’s the only way to keep them clean. The sandwiches are a nice change from all the raw meat, she’ll admit, though they don’t sate her appetite. Then again, nothing does.

Next is the larger bag. Inside it is a bundle of green fabric and a note, scrawled in the same looping handwriting from the apology note on the very first bag.

 **Your clothing looked very tattered. I hope this will suffice. -** ****R.L.** **

Kanaya barely resists the urge to tear the bag open. Instead she takes a deep breath and opens it at the sealed side, her fingers fumbling and faltering for a few seconds before she can pry it open.

She remembers a distant time when she would toil away at her latest fashion idea, putting in as much love and effort as one fifteen-year-old girl could manage. Then she’d try on her new creation or have her older sister, Porrim, model it. Her room is a foggy memory, but she can recall the spools of thread and swatches of fabric laying about, waiting patiently to be used.

Kanaya pulls the gift from the bag. Out comes a deep green [dress](https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1zGghPpXXXXa7apXXq6xXFXXXn/Belle-Poque-Summer-Dress-2017-Female-Women-Black-Red-Green-Casual-Plus-Size-Tunic-50s-60s.jpg_640x640.jpg), perfect for casual outings. She feels the fabric; it’s the softest thing she’s touched in God knows how long. A laugh escapes her mouth. It’s nothing pretty, considering how she hasn’t used her voice in a while, but it’s a change from the exhaustion she feels all the time. She gently places it back in the bag and pulls the note out. Clipped to it is a marker. Kanaya realizes that the girl actually _wants_ her to reply.

Her hands tremble, though not as badly as yesterday, as she scrawls a thank-you message on the note and drops it into one of the sandwich bags, wondering to herself about the girl who left her the gifts. Why would she continue to do such kind things, after witnessing what she did to that poor deer? Why, after she saw what Kanaya really was? She pushes the thoughts away and glances down at her hands, smeared with blood and grime. There’s endless amounts of dirt caked under her fingernails. She winces. That’s just her hands, too; her clothes consist of a black rag hanging around her hips and a long, blue-striped cloth tied around her chest. It’s barely enough to keep her decent. She likes to think it makes her a little more human, even how she is now.

No, no. This won’t do. She’ll have to at least wash off before she tries on such a lovely dress. And to do that, she’ll need to scavenge for body wash, or at the very least, soap. Not that she’ll find any of that in the forest. Which means the suburbs is her only option.

Kanaya has not been to any populated areas for quite some time. Of course, she sees groups of hunters and the odd hiker deep in the woods, but those are easy to hide from. Modern technology like cameras makes it much more difficult for her to conceal her presence in urban areas. If someone was to see her, the rumors would spread quickly, and she would be found out in no time. But she must wash up. She feels an obligation to, for the lavender-eyed girl.

Kanaya begins the long walk to the suburbs. She knows these woods like the back of her hand. After all, it is her home now. And in a way, her prison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part one of a double update. Thanks for reading!
> 
> I know that alpha Roxy kicked her drinking habit, but canonically, beta Roxy never did. I tried to keep that in mind and portray her correctly, b/c Roxy is also really smart. 
> 
> Also, I'm aware it might make more sense to some if Rose and Dave were siblings as opposed to cousins, but as chaotic (and fun) a Strider-Lalonde would be to write, I wanted to focus on the dynamic between Rose and her mom.


	3. The Unknown and the Familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose searches for answers and finds more than she intended to. Kanaya visits a familiar place.

Rose leaves her bedroom door closed that night, if only so her mother won’t hear the alarm.

It goes off at three a.m. exactly, bringing Rose out of a peaceful slumber. She switches off the clock’s alarm as quickly as she can, then rolls out of bed, blinking the sleep from her eyes. All she grabs is a flashlight and the plastic bag containing the strand of hair before leaving her room.

She knows her mother would agree to analyze the DNA, but requesting help from her is entirely out of the question if she can do it herself. As far as she knows, the lab will function correctly regardless of whether her mother is present or not. Rose knows she is intelligent enough to operate the machinery.

The edges of Rose’s bathrobe, haphazardly tossed over her pajamas, skim the floor as she creeps down the dark corridor. In a single flash-step-- a move she learned from Dave-- Rose is in her mother’s room. She believes that’s what it is despite the lack of a bed. The faint moonlight pouring through the windows illuminates the silhouettes of dozens of bottles, all shapes and sizes, lining the shelves. There’s no sign of her mother.

Rose moves towards the trapdoor in the center of the room, clearly marked by a glowing green symbol of an atom. She kneels down to open it and shines the flashlight down several dozen rungs leading into the laboratory. Rose has never been down this ladder; she only knows that her mother does much of her experiments and research there. Hopefully it’s not where she sleeps at night.

Once she’s down the ladder, Rose finds herself at the center of a dimly lit space, the floor glowing the same lime color as the logo she saw on the trapdoor apart from two gray paths crossing each other and through it. The rungs she just climbed rise up from where the paths intersect. Beyond the grid is a large computer and, to the left of it, objects too far for the flashlight’s beam to distinguish them.

Rose steps towards the screen, noting the keyboard and elaborate number of miscellaneous buttons beneath it. To its right is a bulletin board with dozens of note cards pinned to the surface. She moves to the left, eager to discover what’s waiting in the shadows--

“Mrrow.”

Rose nearly springs ten feet in the air, but forces herself to calm down. She moves the flashlight from left to right, searching for the source of the noise. Surely there can’t be any cats down here. Her mother hadn’t adopted any new ones since Jaspers’ death.

Or so I assumed, Rose thinks to herself. Something soft brushes her leg. She looks down and suppresses a gasp. It’s Jaspers; there’s the same sleek black coat of fur, same slightly kinked tail, same size. But when the cat looks up, she notices a smaller, second set of eyes just above the first two. Rose stares back as it nuzzles against her leg. How…?

She kneels down to pet it and notices a gleaming collar around its neck. That’s nothing new; her mother has always had a fondness for pampering her cats. The letters are bedazzled with glittering, hot pink gems, but Rose can still read them: ‘NO. 23: VODKA MUTINI.’

“Number twenty-three?” Rose mutters. Exactly how many cats is her mother secretly keeping in the laboratory? She swerves the flashlight around, eyes narrowed. Another cat steps into view, its two tails swishing against the floor as it pads up to Rose. Its collar reads, ‘NO. 57: PUMPKIN SPICE LATTE.’ The room gradually fills with cats as at least two dozen step from their hiding places and greet Rose with meows and purrs.

Rose shines her flashlight at a wall she hadn’t bothered to observe. Now she can clearly see the jars stacked one upon the other and bolted to the wall. Each jar has a bedazzled nametag, just like the collars: ‘NO. 12: WHISKEYERS.’ ‘NO. 45: CHESHIRE.’ ‘NO. 70: MARY QUEEN OF SCOTCH.’ ‘NO. 90: MEOWTH.’ The numbers go in order from one up to twenty-two, where they start to skip over some. Each jar holds a dark silhouette of what Rose assumes to be a cat, though they’re all mutated in one way or another and encased in some sort of green goo; she guesses it’s some type of formaldehyde to preserve the remains.

She directs her flashlight at the top of the wall, and her breath catches in her throat once she sees a clump of something floating in the green mixture. The plate reads, ‘NO. 0: JASPERS (SAMPLE).’

“What the hell,” Rose mumbles, stumbling out of the sea of cats and towards the rectangular objects still shrouded in darkness. How long has her mother been hiding these experiments from her? She sees plenty of mature cats, meaning it’s been at least a year.

She finds herself standing in front of a bed. The sheets are a gaudy pink pattern, and the wizard plushie only tops off the specific kind of weirdness the setting emanates. Clearly this bed belongs to her mother. So why is there no one in it?

A hand falls on her shoulder.

“What’cha doin’ up so late?”

Rose turns, and there’s her mother, eyes half-lidded but still bright. She wears her usual white lab coat over pink footie pajamas. “I should ask you the same, Mother.”

“Just burnin’ the late night oil. Y’know.”

“Would that happen to involve possessing an excessive number of felines in your laboratory?”

Rose’s mother sighs and runs a hand through her hair. Her shoulders slump, as if she were dreading this question. “You got me. Look, it’s supposed to be a surprise. I can’t say much about the whole dealio with the cats, you feel?”

“How many of them are down here?” Rose asks.

“Not counting the ones cryogenically preserved--” Rose’s mother gestures to the wall of jars-- “I’d say, maybe like fifty or sixty? I swear I’ve been takin’ care of ‘em… Hey, what’s that you’re holding onto?”

Rose’s mouth goes dry. She didn’t think of a lie to tell her mother because she figured she wouldn’t be awake. “That is… an interesting story, actually. I found it in the forest next to a slain animal. I would like to know what--or who-- attacked it.”

“Ohh! So you came down here to use the DNA analysis machine? Yeah, no sweat. Right this way.”

Rose follows her mother, a storm brewing in her head. She hasn’t exactly been honest with her mother, but it turns out that she’s been given the same level of respect. It feels like a slap in the face; she always prided herself on her ability to catch any small detail, and yet she never bothered to notice that her mother was hoarding about five dozen cats under the mansion. How could she have been so ignorant?  
They arrive in front of another screen next to several tubes of green slime. Rose’s mother pulls a pair of gloves from her pocket and slips them on. “Alright, one DNA analysis comin’ hot and fresh. Hand ‘er over.” Rose opens the bag, and her mother pulls out the strand of hair, examining it carefully. “Hmm. Y’know, you don’t gotta stick around. This is gonna take a while.”

“It is?” At this point, Rose isn’t sure if her mother’s telling the truth or just saying that to get Rose to leave.

“Yeah. Stuff like this doesn’t work how they say it does in all the crime shows. The process takes time, ‘cuz you gotta extract the DNA, then figure how much of the good stuff you’ve got, then multiply it, then… I don’t wanna bore you with that kinda shit, Rose. Point is, this might be a while.”

“I’ll go to bed, then. When...when will it be finished?”

Rose’s mother shrugs. “Not this morning. Probably the next one, if I’m quick about it.”

“Very well. Thank you, Mother. I’ll return to my room.” She says the words through gritted teeth, then make her way back towards the rungs leading upstairs, ignoring the cats who meow to try and get her attention.

“Sleep well!”

Rose rolls her eyes as she makes her way back upstairs.

***

The school day passes by just as quickly as Rose expected-- which is to say, slower than an elderly tortoise. Exhaustion clings to the back of her mind, telling Rose to regret her late-night excursion to the laboratory, though she knows it will be worth it if she can know more about the creature. She keeps the fatigue at bay by drinking iced black coffee, courtesy of Jade. That girl really does have everything in her backpack.

The only incident that still sticks out to Rose as she steps off the bus is when Sollux asked her for a favor in history class. They’d been working on a group project together in a fairly peaceful manner, if she ignored Karkat’s occasional complaints about ‘the blatantly offensive mediocrity of this shithole of a public education system’ and ‘this George Washington douche did some cool shit, sure, but his teeth were faker than our principal’s cheesy smile, and he wore a wig, you guys, a _fucking powdered wig,_ how much of a pretentious dickhole do you have to be to _do that?!_ ’ The peace was only further broken when he started yelling at Terezi for drawing the Kool-Aid Man in bright red ink on his paper.

As Rose was staring at the doodle, slightly astonished by the accuracy of it-- had Terezi specifically been practicing drawing the Kool-Aid Man?-- she felt a light tap on her shoulder and turned the other way to see Sollux, his bi-colored eyes clouded over-- not that that was anything new. He’d transferred to the school last year following an accident that had left him with little vision remaining. Rose had always felt tempted to ask him what had happened, but ultimately she had decided not to pry.

Sollux gave her a wave of his hand. “You have fifth period lunch, right?”

Rose nodded.

“And you eat in the library with that glasses girl to avoid crowds and shit, right?”

“How did you--”

“Wild guess. Or maybe I hacked into the school security system for the hell of it. Same difference.” He shrugged. “Point is, I need a favor. You’re the best person to ask, so here’s the thing.”

Sollux leaned in just to make sure Karkat and Terezi wouldn’t hear, despite the fact that they were still bickering. “There’s a new student coming in tomorrow due to some...some shit, I can’t explain. Look, I guess you could say she’s my friend. And I’ve got some classes with her, but not lunch. You know how sitting alone in this school gets, right? Instantly branded as a nerd and thrown to the dogs. So… I’m sure you get what I’m trying to say. You in or not?”

Rose mulled it over. She didn’t know anything about the stranger’s personality, but even if she didn’t get along with her, Jade probably would. And having Sollux owe her a favor in return could prove to be valuable. One only needed to look at the records of mysterious hacks the school’s technology had suffered to understand that.

“I’m in,” she declared. “Is there anything I should know about this friend of yours?”

Sollux snorted. “Don’t worry about it, everyone gets along with her. She’s tall as hell and has hair so long even _I_ can see it clearly, and I’m legally blind.”

The bell rang. Students left their desks to go to the next class, with Karkat mumbling something along the lines of “fucking finally” under his breath as he slung a backpack over his shoulder. Rose grabbed her bag and stood, ready to go to biology.

“Oh, Rose. One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“She wears a pair of pink goggles around her neck,” Sollux said, pressing emphasis on it as if it were the most important detail. “Can’t miss that. Jesus, how’d I forget it?”

Rose goes over the details as she walks back to her home. It’s autumn, so someone transferring into the system isn’t too out of the ordinary, but what she wants to know is why. Even Sollux refused to specify, and he’s usually blunt as a spoon. She guesses she’ll have to ask the stranger herself tomorrow at lunch.

She heads into the woods before going into her house. The anticipation of finding the next note is killing her, and she already has the extra sandwiches in her lunchbox to spare. If she makes it a habit to go into the forest before entering her home instead of vice versa, she can maximize her time.

The wind is stronger than usual today, sending Rose’s hair blowing across her face as she walks beside the brook. It’s times like these that she’s glad her hair is so short. When the weather gets like this, Jade’s hair becomes impossibly tangled unless she bothers to put it in a bun. Rose doesn’t understand why her friend wants to have hair that long, but she won’t be rude about it.

She arrives at the spot next to the treehouse where she first witnessed the creature. The dress and its plastic bag have both disappeared, but the note and the marker have been left behind in one of the sandwich bags. Rose was expecting to see a return message on the note, but she still ends up grinning as she reads it.

**Thank you. I love dresses and green is my favorite color - K.M.**

Below it is a crudely drawn smiley face.

Rose sets down the sandwiches she brought for the day and writes another response on the note before slipping it into a bag. It’s a bigger piece of paper, so it should be able to hold another one of the creature’s responses before Rose will have to fetch a new one.

No, she thinks to herself. Maybe she shouldn’t be referring to K.M. as a creature; after all, they seem human enough from the way the bags are carefully sealed and from the messages. It’s hard for Rose to believe that the recipient of the gifts and the monster she witnessed tearing apart the doe are one and the same. But who else would be lurking around the woods?

“An acquaintance,” Rose muses. That’s what she’ll consider K.M. to be until she can figure out more. She finds herself smiling as she walks back home.

***

It turns out it is easier to rob a house than Kanaya thought it would be.

She mentally chastises herself for considering it a burglary. It is not theft so much as resourcefulness. She knows that the owners of this house are always at the beach during the summer, and she’s also aware that the key to their home lies under the doormat. Kanaya is privy to all this information only because they were her next-door neighbors, back when she still lived here as a girl instead of a monster.

She cannot help but sigh as she creeps to the front door of the house, silently praying that the darkness of night is enough to conceal her. Kanaya had reached her town only in the morning, but she had decided to wait until dark to sneak into her neighbors’ home. The girl in the woods has probably left her a gift by now, so she will need to make this fast if she wants to get back in time.

Seeing her home next door fills her with a sense of longing. She wishes she could run inside and tell her mother and sister about all the horrible things that had happened. She wishes for teasing but kind words from her sister, or a warm embrace from her mother. Kanaya wipes at her eyes, willing the tears welling up to disappear. It’s been a year; she thought she was done with feeling nostalgic, but it seems to linger around her more than ever these days.

Kanaya pulls the key out from under the doormat and unlocks the door, which swings open with a low creak. Her eyes dart across the foyer of the house, looking for any sign of life. Only when it is clear that nothing is going to jump out does she step into the house, footsteps light and hands balled into fists.

It doesn’t take long for her to find a bar of soap and a travel bottle of shampoo stashed away in a bathroom cabinet. She reluctantly places them in the plastic bag and pulls out the dress, once again marvelling at the texture. It’s difficult for her to recall much of her studies in fashion, but whatever the dress is made of, it’s soft.

Kanaya remembers a time when she took all of this-- the nice dresses, the toiletries, the warm home-- for granted. It made the first month in the woods the hardest. She had stumbled through the dark, night after night, with both fear and an insatiable hunger gnawing at her belly. As much as she had wanted to run home, she knew that she would be treated as a monster, not as Kanaya Maryam.

She glances into the ornate mirror hanging over the sink. Her face, though more human than her other form, is still caked with blood and dirt. Two nearly identical horns stretch from her head, and her once well-kempt black hair now falls into her eyes and over her shoulders. She scowls. She’ll have to deal with that, too.

Running any water will cause a rise in the water bill, which might make the owners of the house suspect that someone had intruded. So Kanaya searches the kitchen and garage fridges for any plastic water bottles, which she’ll throw in another neighbor’s recycling can once she’s finished. Once she has them all gathered, she goes to the kitchen sink and grabs a small towel. Maybe she’ll steal that, too. It’s not as if they’ll notice it is gone, as there are five other identical towels there..

Kanaya pulls off the rags she considered clothes and stuffs them into the plastic bag; she’ll wear those if she needs to transform, because God forbid she ruin such a beautiful dress. She gets to work scrubbing all the dirt and grime away with the bar of soap and some hesitant pouring of the water bottles. The sheer amount of residue from her skin that goes down the drain disgusts her.

Next is washing her hair. She leans over the sink and pours some water into her locks, then scrubs the shampoo in thoroughly, her nails scraping away at a year’s worth of accumulated filth that the river couldn’t quite remove. By the time she has rinsed out the shampoo, most of the water bottles are empty.

Kanaya dries herself off with the towel and slips into the dress. It clearly was intended for someone of a much smaller stature, because the design looks to her like a below-the-knee dress, but it brushes above hers. Despite the shortness, it fits fairly well in other places, though Kanaya wonders if that’s just because she’s worn nothing but rags for the past year. She rushes over to the desk cabinet in the other room and fishes around it for a pair of scissors. Once she finds a pair, she steps over to the mirror and raises them to her hair.

The haircut is by no means perfect; Kanaya’s hands are unsteady, and she knows nothing of styling techniques. But when she looks into the mirror, she sees a girl who looks much more like herself from a year ago, even if her smile betrays two sharp fangs.

At first she believed the urge to clean herself was because of the girl in the woods. But now Kanaya knows the truth. As badly as she tried to convince herself that she could live in the forest, the one place where no one else would be harmed because of her actions, she is still a human somewhere deep down, despite all she’s done.

She sweeps up the hair and uses the small towel to mop up any excess water. Once she exits the house, she leaves the water bottles in a neighbor’s recycling can, and buries the clumps of hair in the trash can. From there she heads down the sidewalk, still clutching the plastic bag containing the rags, the toiletries, and the towel. This will be helpful if she needs them later, she decides as she looks at her own house. The lights are all off, but Kanaya has found that her curse has at least one perk: she can see in the dark. It look the same as ever from the outside. She wonders if they cleaned her room out, thinking that she was dead, or if they still cling onto the hope that she might return.

She takes a glance around. Kanaya missed this place so badly it makes her chest ache now. Memories of her childhood here crash over her like a tidal wave: running around the backyard with Porrim, playing hide-and-seek with the neighbors’ kids, trying to climb the lamppost to impress that one girl across the street...

There’s a laminated piece of paper duct-taped to the lamppost, Kanaya realizes. She steps towards it and looks it over, her eyes widening. She feels her heart stop beating, only to start up again, faster this time.

**HAVE YOU SEEN HER?**

**Kanaya Maryam**

**Age: 16 (currently) | Height: 5’11” | Weight: 160 | Hair: Black | Eyes: Green**

**Last seen: Ash Heights Campground, October 18th, 20XX**

**Call XXX-XXX-XXXX with any information**

**PLEASE - INFORMATION NEEDED**

On the paper is a picture of her face from the school yearbook. There’s another laminated paper behind hers. She lifts the first with shaking hands.

**HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?**

Oh God. She recognizes that face. Her grip on the paper tightens, the words rippling under her fingers. They’re still searching after all this time. Not just for her, but for him. Does anyone know what really happened? Did _she_ lie about it?

She doesn’t want to think about it, but it floods her mind, and for once since the curse started she feels completely sick to her stomach, like anything that she might eat would just come back up. Her hands are clammy and trembling, already losing a grip on the paper. She can’t take it. She can’t go back.

Kanaya turns tail and goes sprinting into the darkness, not bothering to look back once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two of the double update. Thanks for reading!
> 
> School's coming up for me so updating might become a bit more difficult and spaced out? So I thought I'd put in a double update to give myself more time between this one and the next so I can get school stuff sorted out.
> 
> Some other notes: This AU's setting is intended to be realistic (Kanaya's condition is kind of the fantasy aspect of it), so that's why the entrance to Roxy's lab is a trapdoor instead of a transportalizer. Parts of the lab have been redesigned as well. Also, when Sollux was blinded in canon, he had some teeth knocked out and lost his lisp, so that's why it wasn't typed out in his speech.


	4. Breakdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose has an outburst. Kanaya spends some time in introspection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sdjfsjf this is so late I'm sorry

Rose considers herself to be a morning person when under the right circumstances; she’ll function well enough if she receives a cup of iced black coffee. She likes to think the beverage embodies her personality: always true to who she is, although some see her as bitter. Though maybe that’s her repressed emo phase from middle school talking. For better or worse, the earliest and latest hours of the day are the times Rose does her deepest thinking.

She sips her coffee as she prepares her lunch for the day, just as she does every morning. One grilled cheese sandwich, a Tupperware container of apple slices, a bag of chips, and then a small bar of dark chocolate… 

Her phone buzzes on the counter, and she picks it up, noticing she’s receiving several texts from her mother. Rose can’t help but grimace. Her mother is one of those people who shoots off several short texts of varying degrees of importance instead of containing it all in one concise blurb. It irks her.

**mom: i kno the bus doesnt come for a lil while so**

**mom: figured youd have soem time to come down 2 the lab**

**mom: dna results are here for the takin**

**mom: and hoo fuckin boy are they outta whack**

It’s about time. Rose sets down her coffee and makes a beeline for the stairs.

***

“Well, here it is. One steaming clusterfuck.”

Rose doesn’t know anything about the machines her mother uses, so the genetic codes appearing on the screen are little more than gibberish to her. She scowls and crosses her arms over her chest as her mother rambles about the various factors that led her to conclusions. Rose has always hated it when people explain things to her. It makes her feel like an idiot.

She hates this lab in general; the lime color of the symbol pervades everything, dim enough to make the room gloomy but bright enough to annoy her. It doesn’t help that one wall is still lined with jars of cryogenically preserved cats, their bedazzled nameplates gleaming pink in the faint lighting. She wonders how the living cats feel about this place. Maybe they spend their days searching wall after wall, desperate to find some sunlight. Or perhaps they fight amongst themselves, hissing and grappling for dominance. She can’t imagine it’s pleasant down here for them, regardless of what her mother might say. It fills her with irritation.

“...And so, that’s why I think this thing isn’t entirely human!” Rose’s mother concludes, clapping her hands. “The majority of the DNA clearly replicated patterns we see in humans, but there were sections that took after a different animal. Some kinda deer? It’s wild. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“I see.” Rose nods, already taking a step back. One of the cats-- its collar reads ‘NO. 37: MUFASA--’ nuzzles against her ankle. She pats it lightly on the head and wonders if it gets lonely down here with only an eccentric scientist to keep it company.

Rose’s mother grins. She has that shine in her eyes she gets when she’s inspired. “You’re holdin’ out on me, Rose. You gotta tell me where you found this shit. This could be some kind of chimera! We could make a whole new breakthrough in science!” She reaches out to lay a hand on Rose’s shoulder, only for her daughter to flinch away, a rigid expression on her face. 

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Rose says. She forces a coolness in every word, if only so her mother won’t ask. Maybe she would understand the situation with K.M.-- after all, she’s always had a flair for the mysterious. But somehow it feels too private to talk about, like exposing a situation so confidential to her mother would leave her open and raw, and then the rest of her secrets and spite would spill right out. What right does she have to know, anyway?

It doesn’t deter Rose’s mother. She puts on a great show of wobbling her bottom lip as if she’s about to cry, and opens her eyes nice and wide like she does whenever she asks Rose to cook. “Why not, Rosie? 

“Why won’t  _ you  _ tell me about all these cats in the basement, if you’re so eager to dig through my personal business?” Rose points an accusing finger at her mother. She refuses to let her voice shake; she can’t afford to be seen as weak, to be seen through. The malevolence that’s boiled in her gut for years on end bubbles at the end of her words, threatening to break free. In the back of her head she remembers the mock game of sincerity she has going with her mother, but Rose is the kind of person whose fuse burns short rather quickly, and she finds herself caring less and less.

“I--” Rose’s mother sighs, her shoulders sinking as her eyes lower to stare at her shoes. “Like I told you, Rose, my lips are zipped. It’s a surprise. I swear it’s important.” She looks down at Rose, her darkened lips pulled into an apologetic frown. 

For a moment Rose almost feels sorry for her mother, but the spite churns in the back of her throat, erasing any pity she could’ve felt. No more-- she’s done with all the bullshit she’s taken over the years, all the extravagant gifts and false candor from her mother that hide the fact that Roxanne Lalonde doesn’t really give half a damn about her own kid. In the end, it was all one big contest to see who could be the more lavish gift-giver, but the scales were always tipped in her mother’s direction. Rose understands now. Something in the pit of her gut wrenches, and she lets the truth spill out, frustrated and full of rage. Holding up her cold facade around her mother has taken its toll. 

“It’s important, is it? Because keeping a horde of cats locked in your laboratory for undisclosed reasons is more important than telling your own daughter the truth. I suppose you’re used to that, though.” She can’t stop the words frothing out of her mouth; even if she might regret them later, it’s the truth, and she’s so worn down from bottling it up for so long. Her mother stares back, her eyes wide but dull, as if she’s come to expect this. Did she know that her daughter would catch on, eventually? 

“Rosie, I can’t--”

“Don’t ‘Rosie’ me,” she scoffs. “How do I know you’re not lying to me about everything? First all your false honesty, and now your experiments with these cats.” Her voice echoes off the walls. Mufasa scurries away from her leg and goes running into the darkness, letting out a plaintive meow.

Rose’s mother squints. Rose can’t tell if she’s confused or trying not to cry; either way, her voice is thick with emotion, almost choked. “False... honesty?”

“Don’t play dumb. All the gifts you leave me, every last expensive bauble in this damn house, it’s all merely a show to let me know that I’ll never measure up to your displays of affection. But I finally know now.”

“You don’t care. You never did, naturally. This was one glorified show of power to make yourself feel like a proper mother. By leaving your petty gifts you merely goaded me on, although you made it look like a show of love. I can see right through your derision.”

“Derision…?” Rose’s mother echoes. Her voice trails off as she brings a hand to her face, squeezing her cheek between her fingers. She’s quieter now, and her gaze is fixed to the floor.

“You’ve been mocking me since Jaspers’ funeral all those years ago,” Rose hisses, her nails digging into her palms and leaving crescent-shaped marks in her skin. “That was when it all started. Ever since you held such a-- such a  _ festival  _ for his death, I knew none of your actions were sincere. Especially now that you’ve been lying to me this whole time. And even now you refuse to tell me the truth. Unless you’d like to confess now?”

Rose’s mother is silent. She sniffles, once, then twice, but never looks up.

Rose grits her teeth. The flames that burst up in her are dying down now, leaving her all burnt up inside. She still doesn’t feel sorry. Just...tired, somehow, now that she’s vented all her frustrations after years of bottling it up. “That’s fine. I wasn’t expecting anything else.”

As she climbs the ladder back upstairs, the last of the lab she sees is her mother still standing there, staring at the floor, her arms wrapped around herself.

***

Time seems to drag its heels as Rose goes through the day, her eyes staring into nowhere even as she tries to focus on the day’s lessons. The only reprieve is lunch, where she plops down her lunchbox and slumps into a library chair. Jade raises her eyebrows but says nothing, seeing as her mouth is already full of chips.

Rose pulls her food from the lunchbox and finds herself lost in thought again, recalling the words she said to her mother that morning. All day long she’s done nothing but debate in her head about whether or not she was right to speak up. On one hand, her mother had been exposed, and it was an opportune time to act. But on the other hand, Rose contemplates the fact that she’d kept those feelings stashed away for years, and life had been going just fine, hadn’t it? Now everything will be awkward between them.

“Rose,” Jade whispers, finally finished with her chips. She leans in, and Rose can smell peanut butter. “Look at the girl over there! You think she’s new?”

Rose looks in the direction Jade’s gesturing to and notices a stranger standing in the middle of the library. It’s almost painfully easy for Rose to realize the stranger is a transfer student; she’s six feet tall and wears colorful, flowing fabrics with floral patterns. A pair of fuchsia goggles sits around her neck. And if that isn’t proof enough, she has that confused and nervous look on her face that’s common on freshman and transfer students alike.

Before Jade can say anything, Rose stands from the table and waves at the girl, trying to keep her expression nonchalant despite her curiosity. The transfer student’s face lights up, just as she predicted, and she rushes over, setting her lunchbox down next to Jade.

“You’re the girl Sollux told me about! Rose, right?” Her voice is high and lilting.

Rose nods, and the transfer student continues on with a wide grin on her face. “My name’s Feferi! And you are…?”

“Harley. Jade Harley.” She has a smile nearly identical to Feferi’s on her face. Rose can already tell the two of them will get along well. She sits back down and digs into her lunch, not realizing how hungry she was until now. Feferi sees it as a cue and sits too, her fuchsia-painted nails gleaming under the library lights as she opens her lunchbox. Rose looks the meal over: an expensive-looking salad, a roll of bread, and a soup that smells completely tantalizing. It’s clear Feferi has money to throw around.

“Feferi, why did you decide to transfer to this school district? Are you from a different area?”

Feferi shrugs. “Oh, no, I live near here, but I went to the high school towards the west end of town instead! It was closer to home. As for why I transferred, well… It’s kind of a long story.” She laughs, but Rose notices the way she looks down at the table and her shoulders slumping. 

“We have more than enough time to discuss it. I won’t be judgemental, regardless of what it is, and Jade…” Rose glances over at her friend, who is tearing into a piece of beef jerky with a great deal of tenacity. “I’m certain she won’t be rude about it, either.”

“Hm.” Feferi clicks her nails against the table. “There was a class trip around this time last year. We went camping, and it was fun, up until two people went missing… Oh, and poor Sollux! That’s how he lost his vision, you know. He decided to transfer here so people would stop giving him sideways looks in the hall.”

“And the pressure got to you too, eventually,” Rose says.

Feferi nods. “I thought it would stop with the new school year, but apparently not… Oh well!” She claps her hands and brings her cheerful smile back onto her face. Before Rose can ask any more questions, Jade asks Feferi if she wants to arm wrestle for a tin of Pringles, which she enthusiastically agrees to.

Rose’s mind still whirls as she eats her lunch. Sollux was a target at his old school, but why would Feferi be under pressure too? She could’ve been friends with one of the victims… Her gut tells her that her new friend’s words hold more meaning than she knows.

***

Friday afternoon finally arrives after three more days of school and exchanging notes with K.M. Rose looks them over in the scrapbook she’s compiled, the cover labelled ‘Analysis of H.P. Lovecraft’s Literature’ in order to deter her mother. She’s ripped out the pages of her other journal where she first drew K.M. and taped them in, along with the notes they’ve shared over the week, labeled with dates.

October 7th-8th, 20XX

**I’m sorry for frightening you. I hope this is proper compensation. - R. L.**

**_Thank you for the food. - K. M._ **

October 8-9th, 20XX

**Your clothing looked very tattered. I hope this will suffice. - R.L.**

**_Thank you. I love dresses and green is my favorite color - K.M._ **

October 9th-10th, 20XX

**I’m relieved to hear that you like the dress. Do you usually prefer dresses and skirts?**

**Also, ham or turkey? - R.L.**

**_I tended to wear dresses and skirts more frequently, yes._ **

**_I prefer ham, personally. Though both taste delicious. Do you have a preference? - K.M._ **

October 10th-11th, 20XX

**I will admit I am more partial to turkey. -R.L.**

**_Astounding. And to think I believed you were a ham lover like I. -K.M._ **

The latest note is in the woods, awaiting K.M.’s response. 

Rose smiles as she looks her little collection over. Then she closes the binder and stuffs it into her bag, along with a set of pajamas and clothes for the next day. It’s time for her sleepover with Jade, and she wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Once Rose heads downstairs, sleepover necessities in hand and in her backpack, she notices something dart behind a wizard statue. It’s barely anything more than a shadow, but it catches her eye, and she steps towards it in quiet, slow strides, hoping to not startle it.

A cat pads out from behind the statue, its ears perked and its amber eyes staring right into hers. Its collar reads in bedazzled pink letters, ‘NO. 59: SLOANE.’ She notices a third pair of legs in between the first two and nods to herself, only now understanding why Sloane is so fast, even for a cat. She reaches down to stroke its fur and finds herself at ease. It’s been so long since she’s had a pet.

“Hey, Rosie.” 

Rose looks up at her mother, who stands at the entrance to the house. Her eyeliner is smudged at the edges and she has a grim look on her face, cast partly in shadow by the wizard statue. But then she claps her hands, and her mouth twists into a wry little grin. “You ready to go to Jade’s?”

“Indeed. I could call up an Uber driver, though. I’m sure you’d rather not waste the gas.” There go the passive-aggressive tendencies again. It’s second nature to Rose by now. And of course they’re both going to ignore the elephant in the room. 

“I’m not just driving there for  _ you, _ y’know. It’s about time I paid ol’ man English a visit, have a chat over tea and blueberry scones, all that jazz. He won’t stop bragging about some gigantic moose he shot or wrestled with or some shit like that.” Rose’s mother dismisses her daughter’s concerns with a wave of her hand before opening the door.

The car ride is slow and awkward. Rose still feels a lump in her gut from the fight she had with her mother, though she’s still not certain how she’s supposed to feel about it. She supposes that the cats being allowed on the main floor is her mother’s way of coming clean. Does that count as a step towards honesty, or is it out of guilt? She can’t help but analyze it, like she does with everything else. Facts are easy. Emotions tend to be more difficult.

Rose’s mother jerks the wheel to the side, and the car takes a sharp turn to the right. Rose grips onto the side of her seat with one hand, gritting her teeth. Right. She’d almost forgotten about her mother’s chaotic driving habits. She resists the urge to roll her eyes and takes a glance out the window instead. The forest rushes by as the car speeds onward. 

Jade’s house is a twenty-minute ride down the road and into the heart of the wilderness, just where Grandpa Harley likes it. Rose can spot it once they’re close because of the gigantic tower rising from the side of the building. If her home is a mansion, then she doesn’t know what the Harleys’ abode constitutes as. She’s not sure how Grandpa Harley gets all the money to pay for his home, either. But it would be rude to ask.

The car lurches to a halt in the driveway, and Rose hops out, taking her belongings with her. Jade comes running out the door with her dog and Grandpa Harley following close behind. 

“Rose, it’s so good to see you!” Jade nearly tackles her friend in a hug. It takes everything in Rose to not push her friend away; she’s never been much of a hugger, but she knows Jade is. 

“You say that like you didn’t just see me yesterday,” Rose responds, gently freeing herself from the hug. She glances over to her mother, who has already rushed over to pet Bec as she talks to Grandpa Harley. Rose isn’t exactly sure why she calls him ‘English,’ though she suspects it’s a former surname. He seems to be telling some wild story about a hunting expedition, and she cuts in with snarky remarks here and there, which make him let out a great, booming chuckle.

“Yeah, but we haven’t hung out outside of school for a while… Here, lemme get your stuff.” And with that, Jade hoists up the sleeping bag and pillow that Rose had been carrying like they weigh nothing. She sprints towards the door, and Rose follows, still amazed by her friend’s strength even after all these years.

Jade’s mansion could best be described as eccentric, Rose thinks. There’s a series of hallways leading further into the house, along with a spiral staircase in the center that seems to go on forever. Some kind of gigantic stuffed snake lays next to the stairway, its mouth still agape.

“Grandpa shot that thing last month in Costa Rica,” Jade explains nonchalantly, as if she sees gigantic dead animals all the time. She hustles up the stairs with Rose in tow.

Jade’s room is at the topmost tower of the building, and Rose can barely prevent herself from collapsing by the time they reach it. There are some new posters up, and the Squiddle collection has increased in size, but the majority of the room has stayed the same. It would resemble a child’s room if not for the several large rifles hung up above Jade’s desk. A window behind Jade's bed shows a beautiful view of the great outdoors-- as well as the terrible amount of height between the room and the ground. 

“I thought you mentioned an elevator the last time I was here,” Rose says as she sets down her backpack.

Jade beams. “Oh, I did! Grandpa had it installed a few weeks ago. But it’s just habit for me to go up the stairs, y’know? And exercise is important. I can’t let Bec beat me in a wrestling competition anytime soon!”

Rose snorts. The thing with Jade is that everyone expects her to be a weak little girl just because she acts friendly and cute, but she knows that her friend is tough as nails and fully capable of wielding both a gun and her fists. She seats herself on the bed. “I’m certain you could defeat your dog in a fight. But how about a brawl against me? Specifically, a Super Smash Bros Brawl?”

If Jade were in an anime, she’d be doing the gleaming glasses effect usually reserved for the prodigy character. “I see you doubt my skills, Lalonde. Challenge accepted!”

Rose had nearly forgotten how fun it was to be around Jade. She herself had always been an introvert, preferring her novels and violin over the company of others. But hanging out with Jade brings a new side out of her that few people get to witness, especially when they play video games. She actually laughs when she swerves Rosalina to hit Waluigi and send him plummeting off the rainbow road. 

“Okay, you win.” Jade shuts off the console and flops down onto her bed. Outside the window, Rose can see stars twinkling in the dark sky. She unrolls her sleeping bag as Jade rambles on about some gossip at the school. Rose normally doesn’t find the rumors interesting, but Jade has a way of punctuating it with off-handed comments and exclamations that make it entertaining.

The two girls relax as the night winds down. They watch a movie on Jade’s laptop; at sleepovers, they tend to pick corny old horror films to make scathing commentary on. Halfway through, Jade puts Karkat in on a video call, and his frustrated critique of the film makes them both snicker.

Once the movie is finished, Jade says good-bye to Karkat and brings up the topic Rose had been both anticipating and dreading. She reaches under her bed and lugs out an ancient, dusted tome with a leather cover. “So, that creature you had a dream about… Can you tell me what it looked like? I’m sure I can find it in the index, unless the dream was super hazy. Which happens to me all the time, but no worries! I have a dream interpretation book, too.”

Rose stares at the wall, still lost in thought. She debates with herself over whether or not telling Jade the truth would be the best option. On one hand, she would avoid ensnaring herself in a complicated web of lies, but on the other hand, she doesn’t know what lengths Jade would go to for tracking down a cryptid. And if her grandfather caught word of it… Things wouldn’t end well.

Jade snaps her fingers. “Rose… Rose, look at me. I live in a house with my grandpa, who hunts and stuffs Australian monsters for sport, and my weirdly smart dog, who is most likely immortal. Whatever it is you’re about to tell me, I’m sure it’s not that bad--”

“It wasn’t a dream,” Rose interjects.

“I-- What?”

“You may think I’ve finally gone off my proverbial rocker, Jade, but I assure you I’m telling you nothing less than the truth. The creature is real, and they live in the forest behind my house. I only caught a glimpse.”

Jade is silent for a moment. Then she seats herself on the carpet beside Rose and begins to flip through the enormous book, her tongue poking out of her mouth in concentration.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, I did! I’m just looking through the section for forest-inhabiting creatures, since you mentioned it.” She looks up from the book and flashes a buck-toothed smile. “Of course I believe you! Rose, you’re my friend, and I don’t have any reason to not trust you. I mean, we’ve been buddies since we were little kids. Why would you lie to me or something silly like that?”

Rose nods. She thinks of her mother, just for a second, then snaps back to attention. “Right. Thank you. So I wanted to begin with the creature’s set of horns…”

***

Kanaya wakes up covered in filth.

She sits up from the carpet of dead leaves and dried, coagulated blood. The gentle breeze ruffles the ends of her hair as she stares out into the forest; faint edges of a pink dawn are already on the horizon. A rotting, acrid stench hits her nose. It’s nothing new. 

It is only when Kanaya stands up, her legs trembling with effort, does she realize she is completely nude. All that remains of her beautiful green dress is a couple of shredded scraps that stick to the crusting patches blood on her skin. Her plastic bag of supplies is gone, too. Her heart stops and then starts up again, beating faster; not because she doesn’t know what happened, but because her precious dress is gone.

She’s all too familiar with this scene. It happens at least once a moon, when she goes completely feral and shifts before she can stop herself. Sometimes she can remember what she did. She tends to consider herself lucky when she can’t recall anything. But now she strains to bring the memories back, hoping that the location of her bag and her precious dress lie somewhere in her head.

She remembers seeing a stag bounding over the hills, its slender limbs sending it high and far across the forest floor with every leap. It was certainly quick-- but not quick enough, Kanaya thinks. More of the memories trickle in like leaks in a dam, but she pushes them away. She knows enough now.

She can vaguely recall seeing a large birch tree with a felled branch by the stag. Perhaps she left her belongings there? Kanaya dusts off her knees and begins the slow trek across the woods, using familiar landmarks to guide her. Once she finds her keepsakes, she muses, she’ll need to wash off in the river again. 

About halfway to the birch tree, Kanaya finds the fallen stag-- or rather, what remains of it. She crouches down beside the carcass and observes what she’s done. It’s unpleasant, to say the least, but she pays homage to her kills every time. 

“I am sorry,” she says, and her gaze shifts to her bloodied hands. “I had to kill you. There was no other option.”

The stag does not respond.

Kanaya mentally chastises herself. Here she is apologizing to a dead deer in the middle of the woods. Is she truly that desperate for someone to talk to? She can remember a time when she’d arrive home from school every day, back before the incident. Mother would greet her with a warm smile and ask her how her day went, and Kanaya would tell her about her classes and the latest drama and maybe any girls who caught her eye.

That’s nothing more than a dream now, Kanaya tells herself. She cannot go back, or everyone she loves will be hurt. The mutilated stag is only proof of that. She gets to her feet and continues southward, already half lost in her thoughts. 

The sun starts it slow climb up the sky, casting long shadows across the forest floor. Kanaya stares at them until her vision blurs. She wonders if killing the stag was as necessary as she said it was. Hunters go looking for deer all the time, she tells herself. But she remembers the sheer carnage as she chased the stag and nearly tore it apart with her fangs and claws, all while it was still alive. Compared to her method, a bullet is merciful. And eating the stag never sated her hunger, not for a second. She still feels the ache in her gut. The meat of the stag is in there, digesting, but she knows it cannot fill her. That is her curse.

Kanaya arrives at the birch tree. Her plastic bag is still intact, though the dress was not nearly as fortunate, already torn into smaller but still salvageable pieces. She sighs. The dress was a memento from the lavender-eyed girl, and she has ruined it. She destroys everything she touches.

After washing off in the river, Kanaya dons her old rags with a wince at their poor condition and stuffs the remains of the dress into the bag. She could repair it, if she just had some thread. As she walks towards the location of the notes, she composes a message in her mind for the girl. It is a risk, but it is one she is willing to take. She’d like nothing more than to stop wearing the rags that remind her of the past, and besides, donning the green dress comforts her. It is a gift from her only friend.

She picks up the latest bag and reads the note. At first, she would devour the sandwiches and then read the note, but she’s taken to doing the opposite. The notes from the girl are more of a comfort to her now than the food. A small grin finds its way onto her face as she reads the latest response.

**Me, eat ham? How confounding. I don’t deign to consume pork unless it’s bacon. God forbid an American ingest something remotely healthy. - R.L.**

Kanaya has always considered herself intelligent. She suspects that R.L. is attempting to prod a reaction out of her with the comment about Americans in a bid to discover her origins.

**_I see we have found a point to agree upon. Bacon is the most optimal way to serve pork, I concur._ **

**_On another note: I hate to be a bother. But may I ask if you have a needle and thread? The lovely dress you have given me has sustained a gash in the side, and I would like to stitch it up. -K.M._ **

She would’ve preferred to not give away the fact that she knows how to sew, but it’s a necessary evil. As she slips the note into the bag and places it back on the ground, Kanaya picks up her bag and startso trudge away next to the river, lost in thought about what her life has become. At least she still has a friend. That’s enough for her.

_ SNAP. _

Her heart stops and her head whips around to see a human figure standing in the woods, watching her with wide eyes. She freezes up like a deer under the headlights as this stranger stares at her, black-painted lips parted in a small ‘O’ of surprise.

“Holy shit,” the stranger blurts out.

Quick as a bullet, Kanaya darts away, her legs carrying her faster and faster into the woods as she swerves this way and that to avoid the trees. It’s instinct at this point. She doesn’t look back, not once, and she doesn’t stop until her heart is racing in her chest and she’s wheezing for breath. She stares up at the sky, the sun already rising into the expanse of blue. It’s a cloudless day.

That was not the lavender-eyed girl she saw; no, that was not R.L. But no one usually came around these areas of the woods; it was the southern parts she had to be careful in, thanks to the hunters. She makes a series of mental notes about the stranger; short blonde hair, black lipstick, white labcoat, pink eyes… Kanaya will need to be more careful in the woods, if she wants to avoid the stranger. She can only wonder what the newcomer might do with the note left behind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S! HERE!
> 
> Sorry this is so late, school has me dying and I lost a lot of motivation BUT I will try to update whenever I can, and I tried to make this update decently long to sorta make up for it


	5. To Know and To Feel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose discovers an intriguing new lead. Kanaya allows her emotions to guide her.

Rose’s fingers fly over the keyboard before she switches to the mouse, clicking on articles with unrelenting speed. She has to find it. Why, of all people, did it have to be Feferi?

She knew that the transfer student was wealthy, but she didn’t realize the extent of it until she went on an Internet search for the accident Feferi had mentioned. Apparently, the Peixes family owns Crocker Corporations, which leaves Feferi as the heiress to the company. And also rich enough to pull off a media cover-up of the accident, at least where it involves Feferi’s name…

Again and again she enters Feferi’s name and varying degrees of information in a bid to find her involvement with the accident, but all she ends up finding is Crocker Corp advertisements and Feferi’s charity projects. She covers her face with her hands and slumps further back into her chair. This will be more difficult than she thought.

She sits in her bedroom on a Saturday afternoon; Jade had said her goodbyes in the morning, and they had promised to meet again the next weekend. Neither of them had been able to find any record of the creature in the encyclopedia as of the previous night, but Rose remembers how enormous the ancient tome was. It will take time and patience, but it will make the result more satisfying, she tells herself.

After a quick breakfast of some cereal and banana, Rose takes a shower, changes into some casual clothes, and sets out for the woods. Her mother shoots her a strange look as she heads out the door, but she ignores it.

The morning air is cool, though not so freezing enough as to warrant heavy clothing. Rose steps across the red and gold leaves; the crunch under her feet is familiar in such a sweet way that she feels she could stay in the forest forever. She follows the brook to the treehouse and picks up the latest note, tucking it away in her bag. Her newfound friend can sew, apparently. She has the suspicion that they were once human, but something may have occurred to transform them into the creature she witnessed. They have more manners than half the students at her school, anyway.

Rose leaves behind a couple of sandwiches and a response note promising a second dress as well as a needle and thread. She finds herself with a spring in her step as she walks back to her abode, grinning despite her usual nonchalant expression. There has never been anything nearly as fascinating in her life as the discovery of a cryptid; but to her own surprise, she does not endeavor to capture them for research. No, she understands that K.M. is something of a human and something of a creature, and she wishes to understand them better through gaining their trust and, eventually, meeting in person.

She visualizes it as she trods across the forest. She cannot help but see herself escaping the mansion under the cover of night; the moon would be nothing more than a sliver in the sky, but it would guide her footsteps as she wandered to the giant boulder in the woods. There she would glimpse the shadow of her secret friend, watching, waiting, perhaps even  _ hoping  _ to see Rose again. At last K.M. would creep from the darkness and speak to her, all while staring at her with those sunken green eyes.

Rose tells herself to snap out of it, but in truth, it’s nearly impossible to stop herself from playing out the scenarios in her head; she tweaks away at them until she’s built up the dream in her head. An unlikely situation, but beautiful. 

When Rose returns home, her mother is no longer sitting at the counter; all that remains to show she was there is several slips of paper that appear to be research. Rose looks them over, hoping to glean some information, but the scientific terminology completely passes over her head, much to her disdain. She grabs her wallet and heads back outside, deciding it is time for a trip to the craft store. Her stores of black yarn have run dry, anyway. 

A quick walk down the road and a few blocks over leaves Rose at the public bus stop. She has its schedule memorized, and besides, it is too nice of a day for her to not take a walk or two. Once December arrives, everyone will be bundled up in three layers of clothing, but the October weather has yet to be spoiled by winter’s chill. Autumn has always been Rose’s favorite season.

She boards the bus and watches the scenery fly by. The leaves of the deciduous trees have long turned orange and gold, while the somber pines beyond them remain the same shade of deep green. All the familiarity soothes her, but she finds her gaze drifting back to the occupants of the bus. Rose has always been a curious person, and she likes to watch the strangers she sees and make up stories about them. There aren’t too many people on the bus, considering how it’s a lazy Saturday, but she finds herself observing the other passengers anyway.

First is the man clad in blacks and greys; he has an eyepatch, a fedora, and a spade symbol on his suit. Rose theorizes that he’s a member of a shady underground game that plays cards while smoking cigarettes. Her gaze drifts to the couple seated a few rows behind her-- she recognizes Sollux’s lanky form, and he nods at her. He’s holding the hand of a girl with hair that could rival Jade’s and a ratty-looking leather book in her free hand. Every now and then she makes a cheerful comment, which contrasts the subject matter; supposedly, she’s reading about occult practices. It seems to amuse Sollux, though.

Rose gets off the bus at the second stop and walks into the craft store, labeled “Ms. Paint’s Best,” with her head held high. The facility carries the subtle scent of vanilla cleaner and acrylic paint. It eases the dialogue Rose has had whirling in the back of her head since the argument with her mother. She recalls a time when her mother would bring her to the store and allow her to pick out as many craft supplies as she wanted. Then they would return home and paint together, and her mother would always compliment the sloppy portraits of Jaspers or Jade or even herself that she created. Then her dear old mother would order handcrafted, expensive frames and painstakingly place the paintings inside them for permanent commemoration. Some of them still hang in Rose’s house, but every time she sees them, she rolls her eyes.

She wonders what happened to that innocence.

Rose grabs a basket and waves to the cashier, Ms. Paint, before continuing on her way through the store. The aisles are nearly empty apart from two elderly men looking at the puzzles and a tall, middle-aged woman browsing the fabrics. Rose heads into the section of yarns and digs through until she finds a suitable bundle of black yarn. She stuffs it into her basket along with some purple yarn, since she was running out anyway. 

The section for sewing supplies is by no means difficult to find, but Rose isn’t certain what kind of needles and thread she should be looking for. She ends up staring at the selection for a good five minutes before a tap on the shoulder interrupts her.

“Are you having trouble finding a suitable thread?”

Rose turns to look at the stranger. To her surprise, it’s not Ms. Paint, despite the fact that the stranger’s voice is equally soothing. She’s the middle-aged woman Rose saw earlier, and now that she’s closer, Rose can see the smile lines on her face. Her eyes are a vivid shade of green that seem familiar to Rose, and she’s instantly intrigued.

“Yes. I was wondering what needle and thread would be suitable for repairing a tear in a dress. Would you happen to know?”

The woman nods and first takes a set of metal needles. Her hand then hovers over a particular section of threads, and she glances back to Rose. “Any particular color?”

“A deep green. The dress is...a jade sort of color.” The woman picks out a spool of thread that fits Rose’s description quite well. Finally, she takes a small pair of scissors, and then hands all the items to Rose. Rose takes them and places them in her basket, noticing the way the woman’s nails are perfectly painted black.

“Thank you. Do you happen to be a fan of sewing?” Rose asks before she can stop herself. It’s an impulse of hers; once she finds something that catches her interest, she needs to know everything about it, and her gut tells her that the woman is important.

“I… Not exactly. My two daughters-- my, my  _ daughter  _ is more proficient in it. The other one was interested in it before-- Oh, goodness. I’m terribly sorry. You don’t need an old lady like myself lecturing you about her life story.” The woman tries to laugh, but Rose notices the way her eyes dart around as she blinks quickly. She finds herself reaching out to the woman and placing a hand on her shoulder.

“I know I’m simply a bystander, and I understand nothing about your situation, but I can listen if it helps. You seem distressed. Bottling that emotion up won’t aid you in the long run.” It’s hypocritical advice, Rose realizes, but it’s not as if the woman needs to know that.

The woman sniffs. “If you go to the west high school, you’ve already heard about what happened last year, I’m certain. I’m Kanaya’s mother.”

_ Kanaya.  _ The name has a nice ring to it, Rose thinks, and it is one half of the initials she’s used to seeing on the messages from the creature. She pats the woman’s shoulder. “I attend the high school on the east side of town, so I’m not privy to what occurred, I’m afraid. But if it’s more sensitive than you are willing to recount, I understand.”

“The west high school has always had an optional camping trip for some of the students. Kanaya and a boy went...went missing in the night after a great deal of ruckus, according to the witnesses. Another boy was blinded, but at least he-- a-at least he was spared. All they found…” The woman’s expression contorts into one of horror as she shudders. The tears roll down her face, smearing her mascara beyond repair.

Rose pats the woman’s shoulder. She’s not quite sure what to say, but for once, her empathy overpowers the burning desire for more knowledge. So she remains silent.

“My, my darling girl’s clothes  _ torn-- _ torn apart, and blood. S-so much blood,” the woman gasps out, as if she’d been holding her breath. Her shoulders tremble and heave, sobs racking her body.

“I… I’m sorry. It horrifies me that this occurred to your daughter.”

The woman hiccups, and her breaths come out uneven. “Th-there are so many things I wanted to tell her… But I failed to protect her. Even though that’s what a mother is supposed to do.” She wipes at her eyes with her sleeve and stares at the ground. “I should be apologizing. You seem like a very nice girl. Too nice to be hearing something so terrible.” Her expression is more reserved and pained, like someone who has accepted the death of a loved one. “But thank you, dear. You… you remind me of my Kanaya.”

Again Rose is struck into a silence. She’s left to process the woman’s words as she stares at her basket of craft supplies. When she looks up, the woman is giving her a small smile while she dries her tears. “It will be alright. I know it may sound as if I am just a crazy old lady, but I have a faint hope that my daughter is out there. If she were to come back at any time, I would accept her with open arms. That’s the duty of a parent.”

Rose nods. Her mouth has gone too dry for her to speak. The woman pats her shoulder and gives her a cheerful wave as she departs from the aisle, her heels gently clicking against the linoleum tile.

The woman’s words are on her mind for the rest of the day.

***

It is later in the evening when Rose conducts her research. She finds herself sitting on the bed and reading articles about the incident. Her laptop is open to a picture of a girl with green eyes-- someone too familiar for her to ignore.

After she had returned from the store, Rose’s frantic series of Google searches combining the ‘Kanaya’ and the name of the west high school had revealed articles regarding what was referred to as an inexplicable tragedy. She had originally intended to look at the information, but the two photographs of the missing students caught her attention and held it in a firm grip for longer than she had intended.

**HAVE YOU SEEN HER? KANAYA MARYAM**

**HAVE YOU SEEN HIM? ERIDAN AMPORA**

On the screen is a picture of a girl with cleanly cropped black hair, cheerful jade eyes, and a pleasant smile. She is wearing a black shirt, smiling somewhat reservedly at the photographer. Her eyes are familiar, and Rose understands what that fact means all too well. The initials K.M. combined with the disappearance cannot be a coincidence; she finds that the girl possesses a rather lovely beauty to her as well, though such a thought makes her wonder how Kanaya Maryam grew to become the creature Rose first encountered in the forest.

The latter photograph is of a boy giving a poor attempt to smile. His semi-sharp canines are a blinding white behind his violet braces. He appears to be some sort of hipster; his purple-streaked hair, blue-and-black-striped scarf, and what Dave would call ‘nerd glasses’ make Rose snort at first, but she sobers up once she remembers that this boy has been missing for roughly a year. The gleaming gold rings on his fingers makes Rose believe he is one of the wealthier students, and another Internet search of his family leads to the Ampora family’s booming business in the lobster trade. 

Both of the missing students look familiar to Rose, but it’s for different reasons. Kanaya’s similarity to K.M. is only obvious when she looks at the eyes, but Eridan’s appearance itches at something in the back of her mind. She fights with herself for a good five minutes in a vain attempt to remember what she cannot, but it is no use. With a sigh, she moves on to perusing the recollections of the incident.

The story is too simple for Rose. The students of the west high school who opted to attend the camping trip left for Ash Heights Campground on a foggy Friday, October 18th, of last year. According to the students they had interviewed, most of whom had opted to remain anonymous, Eridan was convinced to attend the trip by a close friend of his. Rose briefly thinks back to Feferi and wonders what she’s seen. 

Multiple students reported hearing a calamity in the dead of night coming from the lakeside; none of them witnessed it, supposedly, but it resulted in the permanent impairment of another student who was present during the incident. They were found unconscious at the scene with a severe concussion and several facial injuries. Again the gears in Rose’s mind whirr and click; Sollux’s solemn face and his clouded, bi-colored eyes appear in her mind in vivid detail. She fishes out her notebook and scribbles down notes and connections so quickly she feels her fingers throbbing in protest, but the motivation to search for information now that she finally has a lead makes it impossible for her to stop.

A substantial amount of blood was discovered at the scene; when it was discovered in the morning, it had dried enough for the forensic scientists to realize the incident had occurred around one in the morning, just around the time the students reported hearing a calamity. Rose is disappointed to find that the blood could not be identified as either Kanaya’s or Eridan’s; Kanaya’s blood type was on record because she had donated it in the past, and Eridan’s family had it on his medical documents, but they both had the same type: A positive. Kanaya’s shredded clothing was also found; however, Eridan’s garments were never recovered, and neither were either of the bodies. The case had gradually died down over the year, and it was assumed they’d both been killed thanks to the copious amount of blood left behind.

The witness who had been injured claimed that Kanaya was not present at the time Eridan, who wished them ill will, attempted to attack him, at least while they were conscious. Eridan’s fingerprints on the witness led investigators to confirm this as true, also considering Eridan’s record of a tumultuous past with his family and occasional furious impulses.

Rose scrawls all the information down in her notebook, then tears out the pages and tapes them into the scrapbook she’s been taping the notes and sketches of K.M. into. She leaves herself an additional note to ask Feferi and Sollux about their potential connection to the incident, though she understands she would need to do it gently.

When Rose finally glances up from her scrapbook, she smells a strange aroma beginning to waft through the house. She sits up from where she lays on her bed, and her laptop slides right off her lap. The picture of Kanaya distracts her again for a moment, but she looks away, frowning, and and takes a couple whiffs at the air. 

It’s not quite a burning stench, but she recognizes it clearly. Her face goes pale. “Oh, shit.”

In a flash, Rose is running down the stairs, taking two steps at a time, then moving towards the kitchen so quickly her sock-clad feet slide across the tile. She grabs onto the countertop to slow herself down and takes a couple frantic glances around. There’s a large cooking pot sitting on the counter, its lid wet with condensation, while the oven gives off a warm light to signify that it’s on. A phone encased in a gleaming pink case plays some upbeat techno music.

In the center of all the chaos is Rose’s mother herself. She’s clad in a familiar apron, which Rose recognizes as a gift her mother received from John’s nanna a few years ago; it declares, in glittering letters, ‘NO BITCHIN’ IN MY KITCHEN’. She hums along to the music and twirls around the kitchen in a flurry of action; first stirring a pot, then cutting up the bread, and then checking on the oven. She greets her daughter with a grin and some overdramatic jazz hands. “Hey, Rosie! Like my lil’ setup here? It’s like my laboratory...but not!”

“What...are you doing?” Rose asks, almost incredulous at the sight. Her mother is a single parent, but she is by no means a cook. Most of their meals usually consist of either some kind of pasta, with a side of tater tots haphazardly tossed into the oven, or takeout, especially Chinese. The weirdest part to Rose is that, now that she’s starting to observe the ingredients, she recognizes the meal her mother is attempting to prepare. Is this...a peace offering, to make up for their argument?

Years ago, Rose’s favorite restaurant in town had shut down, taking her favorite meal with it. Her mother had tried to recreate it at home, only to end up with the smoke detectors wailing and a foul stench lingering around the house for a good two weeks. Rose had considered it to be a mockery of her childhood meal, some sort of ironic twist in the game her mother played with her. But now it feels more genuine to her, somehow, even if Rose is still worried that the house might go up in flames.

“Makin’ your favorite, remember? Rosemary bread, broccoli cheddar soup, and one of those lil’ bowls of strawberry yogurt they’d give to the kids. God, I wished I was your age back then so I could slurp that shit right up without gettin’ weird looks. Like, I paid for it! I’ll eat whatever I damn well please.”

Rose’s mind is in overdrive. The meal is likely to appease her, she thinks, but the little nagging part of her mind tells her it’s another grand gesture that she has to bend backwards to compliment with an equally exorbitant gift for her mother. The game of one-upmanship never quite left her, and she wonders if it ever will. All she knows is that her thoughts are insisting she offer to do something in return.

“I appreciate your endeavors to recreate a coveted childhood favorite for me, Mother,” she starts, bringing out a more verbose wording to what she says if only to appear intimidating. “It would only be right of me to compensate you for your troubles; after all, I can only imagine how much of your precious time you’ve chosen to spend on--”

“Nope, nuh-uh,” her mother interrupts, her expression pained. “Don’t worry about all that kinda shit, just-- lay it off the dome. ‘S not important.”

“It isn’t fair for me to not--”

“Rose.” 

Rose looks up at her mother, and she realizes then just how exhausted her guardian looks. The circles under her eyes are more prominent than ever; her eyes look dull, almost glassy, the pink washed-out and worn in the dim light. “You don’t gotta pull a compensation note outta thin air every time I do somethin’ for you. Y’know that, right?”

It takes Rose a moment to compose a thought. She stares at the countertop and all the cooking supplies amassed upon it, and feels an abrupt pang of guilt. Finally she sets out, like walking on thin ice: “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt me to not recompense you for this, considering how I am uncertain as to whether or not this meal will leave me retching from food poisoning. But I’m willing to take a gamble.”

“This some kinda get-back-at-’em towards me for that year I stole some of your Halloween candy and damn near retched my guts out?” her mother remarks, smirking, and with that she’s back to her usual casual attitude. She swings her hip to close a cabinet door, then swivels around the kitchen to stir something in another pot. “I’ve already gotten foodborne illness ‘cuz of ya, Rosie, so ya better watch out. I might slip some of the not-so-good kush in your soup.” Rose can’t help but snort. 

Next thing she knows she finds herself sitting across from her mother at the table with a meal straight from her childhood sitting in front of her. To her surprise, it’s more than edible. She finds herself with lighter spirits as she eats, hesitant at first, but then more quickly when she realizes that her mother hasn’t botched this latest culinary exploration-- or peace offering, if she looks at it that way. Again the harsh words Rose once spat out ring in the back of her head, reminding her of the fight. Then she thinks back to what Kanaya’s mother said back in Ms. Paint’s Best.

_ If she were to come back at any time, I would accept her with open arms. That’s the duty of a parent. _

“Thank you, Mom,” she quietly admits through half a mouthful of rosemary bread.

Her mother glances up from her meal. Her expression is inscrutable at first, but then she offers Rose a small smile.

***

Kanaya finds herself with a grin on her face for the first time in a while.

**It’s no trouble for me to bring you these supplies as well as an additional dress, though I must inquire as to how you learned to sew. Does Bigfoot happen to sponsor needlework lessons this far north? - R.L.**

She reads the words to herself, again and again, as her smile grows wider still. The note is a tangible promise of not only another dress, which she has found herself sorely missing, but a warmth of friendship that she has not felt over the past year. The giddy lightness in her chest replaces the constant ache in her gut for just a moment, but then she looks down at her hands again and notices the blood crusted under her fingernails, visible even under the faint moonlight. 

Kanaya sighs, and the elation fades, leaving her with the gnawing hunger. She must remember that she is walking a dangerous line, constantly stepping closer to having R.L. discover the regrets she carries. One paranoid fear of hers that never quite leaves her dreams is that the lavender-eyed girl will one day wander into the forest late at night in a search to find her. She would sense the girl, perhaps from her footsteps against the floor or the shine of her blonde hair in the moonlight. But, in her feral state, she would not distinguish her friend from prey. The blood would spatter across her torn dress, and that time she would not be able to fix it, or R.L., or any other mistake she’s made.

And then there is the question of the pink-eyed lady she saw the other day. After that incident, Kanaya had almost been too terrified to return to the area around the treehouse where Rose had been leaving her notes. But she has found that the note was left unharmed. It puzzles her just as much as the similarities between the lady and R.L. do. She wonders if they are related.

After devouring the sandwiches, Kanaya leaves a response on the note and begins the trudge back to a place she can’t quite call her house. When she first transformed, she found herself much more resistant to the elements in the woods, but the bitter winds of autumn and winter easily chilled her through her threadbare clothes in the end. She found herself a small alcove amongst the rocks much further upstream, where the hills turn into crags and mountains. It is still odorous and disgusting at times, especially when she drags her bloodied prey back into her lair while feral, but it is the closest thing Kanaya has to a home.

Except she doesn’t want to go there, not tonight, not as long as the words on R.L.’s note are still in her mind. She slings her plastic bag of supplies over her shoulder and places a hand upon the first rung of the treehouse’s worn rope ladder. It takes more effort than she would like, considering how shaky her hands become at times, but Kanaya manages to crawl into the treehouse still intact. 

It’s oddly cozy despite the way the wood occasionally creaks and groans, and the moonlight pouring in through the window provides a source of light. Kanaya has to sit down so her horns don’t brush up against the ceiling. Apart from a large Ziploc bag in one corner, the treehouse is bare. She sets her own bag of supplies aside and reaches for it.

The Ziploc bag is apparently to protect the items inside from the rain, because the novels and photograph are all in perfect condition. Kanaya can’t help but look at the photo first. There’s four kids clothed in swimsuits in the photo, none appearing older than thirteen, caught in a shot of them playing chicken fight in a pool. A blonde boy wearing sunglasses smirks at the camera while carrying a blue-eyed, grinning boy on his shoulders. Their opponent consists of a bucktoothed girl with impossibly long black hair, whose expression is unmistakably devious, and then there’s R.L. sitting on her shoulders with her palms out towards the blue-eyed boy, caught  mid-laugh. The sight of her mysterious friend brings a warmth to Kanaya’s chest that she can’t quite explain. Scribbled in Sharpie on the bottom of the photo is, ‘ _ Happy Birthday, John! Spring of 20XX _ ’.

Then Kanaya turns to the books. R.L. clearly has a taste for darker literature; she spots a brutal murder mystery, a psychological horror novel, and a collection of H.P. Lovecraft’s more notable tales. Her fingers twitch as she picks up the horror novel. It’s been too long since she’s read a book. Surely R.L. wouldn’t mind if she were to read them? And after all, R.L. is a friend of sorts, and friends are supposed to know each other, though their relationship could be described more as some nebulous, undefined ‘thing’ as opposed to a concrete friendship. But beggars can’t be choosers, she supposes.

Kanaya opens the psychological horror novel to the first page. A familiar, looping handwriting announces the book as being the property of Rose Lalonde, and that whoever has found the book should return it to a particular address.

“Rose,” Kanaya mumbles, testing out the name. “Rose Lalonde.” Her voice is hoarse, but the rhythm of the name is soothing to her. It makes the notes from the girl feel like more of a reality. She runs her hand over the writing to reassure herself that it’s genuine. Despite what she’s done, there is a girl out there willing to befriend her; not only that, but Rose is amusing, well-read, and perhaps a light in the dark forest Kanaya’s been wandering through.

_ She would not like you if she knew about Eridan,  _ a voice in the back of her mind hisses.

Kanaya doesn’t want to think about that, not when she’s in such high spirits. She turns the page and begins to read. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your super sweet comments!! They helped keep me motivated as I was writing this and they made me really happy too ;u;
> 
> Schoolwork has kept me swamped, but winter break is coming up so hopefully I can write a lot more of this fic! I'm also planning another Rosemary fic that I'm gonna start uploading once this one is finished, so stay tuned.


	6. To Tell You the Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose enjoys her conversations with K.M., but at what cost?

October 12th-October 13th, 20XX

**It’s no trouble for me to bring you these supplies as well as an additional dress, though I must inquire as to how you learned to sew. Does Bigfoot happen to sponsor needlework lessons this far north? - R.L.**

**_Just as long as one happens to recompense him for his troubles with the annual fee of a squirrel or Girl Scout cookies. And my sincere thanks for the additional dress you have offered. I appreciate your generosity more than I can say. - K.M._ **

October 13th-October 14th, 20XX

**I sincerely hope the dress is the right size. And is black too drab of a color? If so, I apologize. This garment is from a time when I wore exclusively dark shades. - R.L.**

**_Is that a roundabout method of informing me you went through an ‘emo phase’ in your younger years? - K.M._ **

October 14th-October 15th, 20XX

**Are you certain you would like an honest answer to your question? I’m afraid the road to the truth of the matter leads down quite a dark, winding path. - R.L.**

**_I assure you that I would understand as well as any other individual who suffered through the horror of a middle school. With shame I will admit I wore smudged black lipstick to class every single day of seventh grade. - K.M._ **

October 15th-October 16th, 20XX

**Oh God, you’re giving me flashbacks to my lamentable days of caking on makeup. At least now I understand how to wear dark lipstick. Did you manage to pull off the look eventually, or did you abandon the black lip in favor of something lighter? - R.L.**

**_My aesthetic could best be described as, besides shambling forest cryptid, gothic. I managed to master black lipstick after years of simply smearing it on like a Neanderthal. However I do find it rather difficult to D.I.Y. lipstick together in the woods. - K.M._ **

October 16th-October 17th, 20XX

**Then take this for good luck. If you happen to wish to impress Bigfoot after all, I’m certain this will do the trick. - R.L.**

**_My sincere thanks for the lipstick. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen any. Though I must admit that I have no intentions to woo Bigfoot, as he is male. Not to mention that I try not to be too choosy with who I like, but eight-foot-tall bearded monstrosities are not exactly my type. - K.M._ **

October 17th-October 18th, 20XX

**A very fair point. I myself am only attracted to females who are not eight-foot-tall bearded monstrosities. What a strange coincidence. - R.L.**

**_Strange indeed. I have heard that the Bigfoot population is incredibly popular in the dating scene. What would you prefer, then, if not woodland cryptids? - K.M._ **

October 18th-October 19th, 20XX

**I never said I wouldn’t date a woodland cryptid. Just not Bigfoot. I suppose I’d like to be with someone who can keep up with my banter. That, and they can appreciate books. - R.L.**

**_Interesting. What kinds of books do you mean? - K.M._ **

October 19th-October 20th, 20XX

**Books like the ones in the bag with this note, with a great deal of mystery and intrigue. It’s never the same the second time you read it, but the thrill you receive the first time around is well worth it. - R.L.**

**_Goodness, you are spoiling me. First the lipstick and now these novels. I’ll give them a read and inform you of my opinion. Perhaps we should start a forest book club? - K.M._ **

 

Rose is thankful for a great many things in her life, but washi tape just might be near the top. 

Her scrapbook has devolved into a mess over the past week. The notes between her and K.M., combined with all her research and musings about the incident at Ash Heights Campgrounds, have cluttered the pages to the point where she can no longer stuff scraps inside and pray for the best. She tapes another shred of frantic notes inside, smiling at the smiling black cats that decorate the purple tape. Jade gave her a couple rolls as a birthday present, and she’s certainly put them to good use. 

Reading over the notes gives Rose a certain excitement she can no longer find anywhere else. Unraveling the mystery that is Kanaya has not only intrigued her to the point where she stays up at night, considering all the possibilities, but she also finds herself enjoying the stream of easy conversation between herself and her new friend. It feels as if Kanaya reveals more and more about herself with each note, with her words increasingly open about her interests and her past. If Rose didn’t know any better, she’d consider their back-and-forth exchanges to be borderline flirting. 

She has yet to figure out exactly what Kanaya is, however, despite the fact that she had another sleepover at Jade’s house on Friday night. They weren’t able to find an exact match in the creature index, although they did have fun making jokes about all the hilarious pictures inside the book. Watching outdated, cheesy movies and playing video games with Jade weren’t necessary either, but Rose feels it has brought her closer to her friend, though she is still reluctant to show her the notes. 

Jade is perfectly understanding, though. “You get that look on your face whenever you read them,” she had said at the time, holding back a snicker, “like a dozen heart emojis are about to materialize over your head. I’m not gonna ruin that for you.”

Rose has explained to Jade all of her information on the Ash Heights Campground case and the disappearances of Eridan and Kanaya, the latter of whom she believes is K.M. It feels refreshing for her to be open to someone about the details instead of bottling it all up inside the scrapbook and her own head. They’d even come up with a series of theories, spurring increasingly bizarre explanations off each other until they’d concluded, laughing the whole while, that they were living in God’s personal game of  _ The Sims,  _ complete with every otherworldly event that could possibly occur. 

And now Rose sits in her room again, poring over the painstakingly taken notes, wondering how she can possibly piece it together. She’s so caught up in her own thoughts that she nearly forgets her surroundings, but once she comes to her senses, she notices yet another unusual smell.

The aroma wafting from downstairs is, once again, overpowering. Rose gets the impression that her mother has taken to watching more cooking tutorials on YouTube, but the lack of a burning stench beneath it all confuses her. She picks up her backpack and scrapbook before heading downstairs.

“G’mornin,’ Rose,” her mother calls from the kitchen. She picks up a pan from the stove, shakes it around, then tosses the pancake inside into the air before catching it with the pan again. Her face splits into a smile, and she glances at Rose hopefully as if anticipating an encore.

“Be careful,” an accented voice pipes up.

Rose looks to the table, searching for the source of the voice, and her jaw nearly drops. Plate after plate of breakfast food greets her; bacon, scrambled eggs, yogurt with granola, bagels, and pancakes are all on the menu today. Seated in one of the chairs is a dark-skinned woman with eerily bright green eyes and a black beanie on. She waves at Rose before digging into her plate of hash browns.

Now Rose recognizes her. Calliope Makara has been her mother’s kinda-sorta-maybe girlfriend for the better part of two years. Every now and then, when her twin brother is throwing a fit at home, she’ll come to the Lalonde household and work on her paintings in the living room. Rose often sits with her when she does, conversing with Calliope about her eccentric but friendly father and his business in some kind of clown cult.

Rose waits until her mother is washing a pan, water on full blast, before seating herself and quietly asking Calliope, “Did my mother cook  _ all  _ of this? On her own?”

Calliope blanches, looking like a deer in the headlights. “Um, not quite? I taught her how to prepare most of it, and after that she was off like a bullet. With a few mishaps here and there, mind you, but I’d say most of it was successful apart from a cat springing up on the counter to snatch a pancake. I wish I’d gotten a video of it.” She chuckles. “But when did the two of you get so many cats?”

“Well.” Rose blinks. “They were living in our basement.” And she leaves it at that, already piling her plate high with food. “Mother,” she says, raising her voice over the din of the faucet water, “thank you for the breakfast you’ve procured.” The gratitude slides out of her throat much more easily than it did last time.

“Aw shucks, Rosie, no need to thank me. What are moms for?”

Rose chows down on the variety of foods, grateful not to be eating dry cereal for once. Calliope multitasks in the background; one minute she’s eating a powdered donut, and the next she’s drawing away in a battered sketchbook. Feeling comfortable in the quiet atmosphere, Rose finds herself looking through the scrapbook again in an effort to piece together the truth. She squints at the school picture of Sollux she has painstakingly taped in along with Eridan and Kanaya’s. If there’s anyone she can ask about the Ash Heights case, it’s him, as Feferi had mentioned his involvement with an accident from the other school. If only she had an ample opportunity to interview him...

“Oh, _ shit, _ ” Rose exclaims, dropping her scrapbook to the floor with the sudden realization. Her eyes flit to the clock. Eleven fifty-- when did it get so late? 

“Watch your god damn language,” her mother remarks from her spot at the table. Calliope snorts.

Rose pulls an empty plastic bag from her backpack and stuffs a couple powdered donuts in it. Sure, she’s already eaten her heart out, but Rose would feel a bit guilty if she didn’t take some more, considering all the effort her mother must’ve put into the brunch. She slings her bag over her shoulder. “I’m afraid I have to leave. It slipped my mind I have a group project to work on in the library today.” And with that, she dashes out the door, with her mother calling after her, “Whoop all the other groups’ asses for me!”

***

It’s a miracle Rose manages to catch the bus to the public library in time. It annoys her that she managed to forget about the project at all; history class is ridiculously easy, so the few assignments she receives should be more than easy enough to manage. At least the library eases her nerves; the scent of old, worn books piled high on the shelves is familiar to her, and the sunlight streaming in through the windows puts a spring in her step. Sollux, Terezi, and Karkat are all sitting at a table in the back, with the latter two arguing amongst themselves while Sollux types away at a laptop, pushing at his earbuds every now and then.

“You’re  _ late, _ ” Terezi cooes, grinning at Rose. She clutches a crumpled McDonald’s bag in her hands, her black-painted nails digging into the paper. “Care for some disgustingly greasy fast food? It’s especially delicious today.”

“I already had breakfast, thank you.” Rose seats herself next to Sollux, who is typing almost frantically. He might not have the best vision, but he types at a freakishly quick rate; Rose attributes it to his familiarity with coding. 

“More chicken nuggets for me, then,” Terezi gleefully exclaims. She tears open the bag and stuffs several into her mouth without a trace of shame. 

Karkat’s scowl deepens. “Now that you’re done demonstrating your clearly carnivorous instincts, not to mention your fucking horrifying ability to scarf down ten chicken nuggets in a matter of minutes, can we all shut the hell up and get to work already?”

At first Karkat is almost too talkative in the way he rants about their project, but once he buckles down to work, Rose has to admit he’s effective. She can’t say the same for herself; every few minutes she’ll steal a glance at Sollux, wondering what is going through his head, if he’s thinking about the Ash Heights case and what happened to him.

They finish researching and completing their PowerPoint presentation by the late afternoon. Rose supposes they would’ve finished much sooner if they hadn’t fooled around so much, especially when Karkat kept up a furious text conversation for the better part of an hour, with Terezi constantly peeking over his shoulder giggling, “Is it Dave? I’d recognize that sweet red text anywhere!” But the two of them have left to grab dinner, consisting of-- surprise!-- more greasy fast food, leaving Sollux and Rose alone in the library.

Sollux is still typing away at the computer. Once they’d finished the presentation, he’d launched himself right back into coding. Rose has no idea how to approach him about the Ash Heights case. She’s never been the best with emotions; the problem is that they’re so fickle and unpredictable, while facts are always set one way in stone. At last she taps him on the shoulder and clears her throat. 

He yanks out an earbud with one hand and continues typing with the other. “Yeah?”

“I wanted to speak with you about something.”

“Mmhmm?”

“Feferi mentioned you were blinded in an accident at another school. I just wanted to know if...if everything is alright,” she quickly finishes. God, she has no idea how to word things without sounding either completely insensitive or overly polite. There’s not much of a middle ground.

Sollux’s shoulders sag and he stops typing, as if he’s used to this type of question. He pulls out his other earbud. “God, Lalonde, where the hell do I even  _ start?  _ I got my vision knocked out by a maniac. I woke up in a pool of my own blood. And all of a sudden there’s these official police-type guys swarming around me like effin’ bees, asking me what happened when I don’t even know. I barely even know what happened. Half of it’s not believable, anyway.”

There’s an exhaustion in Sollux’s voice that Rose recognizes all too easily. It’s the type to come from someone who’s used to facing disbelief, with the quiet kind of surrender Rose heard from herself when she first admitted the truth to Jade. He knows things, there’s no doubt. But Rose also feels a deeper sympathy for him, knowing she’s not the only one who’s witnessed things considered inconceivable.

“I’ve seen the unbelievable before. You’d be surprised.” She reaches out, slowly enough for Sollux to back away if he needs to, and gives his shoulder a pat. “I promise I won’t be judgemental.”

“Ash Heights Campgrounds is haunted. I swear to God it is,” he starts, letting the words fly like they’re bullets. He glances over to Rose as if expecting some kind of adverse reaction, but all she does is nod, so he continues. “I heard voices before I went blind. The dead. Always wailing and clawing at the inside of my head like they were fucking trapped in there. Dad told me I was just making stuff up, so I kept my mouth shut about it no matter how loud they got. And then I met someone who finally got it.”

“Aradia,” Rose says.

“She knew what it was like. She hears them, too. And she tried to help me deal with their muttering, but it was absolute hell on the day of the field trip. You don’t get it. They were screeching so loud I could barely hear myself think. Bastards didn’t know when to stop. And then ED had the nerve to challenge me to some goddamn duel.”

“Eridan.”

“God, Lalonde, are you psychic or some bullshit? Yeah, he told me to meet him by the lake at, like, three in the morning for some duel over a girl he liked. I warned a friend I’d be heading out. And then when I got there…” 

His eyes are already cloudy, but they go unfocused and glassy, like he’s staring off into a memory. “At first it was an easy fight. We’re both nerds, so kicking each other around in the dirt wasn’t too hard. But then something got…weird about him. I told him some dumb insult, like how Feferi would never like him or some shit, and he just-- Oh man.” Sollux’s breaths rattle in his chest as if there’s something caged inside. 

“He-- he picked me up, by the throat.” Sollux clutches gently at his throat, still remembering the sensation. “And that’s the last thing I saw clearly. Eridan Ampora, of all the damn people, looming over me like some kind of giant with every kind of hatred in his eyes. Then he flung me up against the tree, and I remember hearing a cracking noise, and I thought my skull had broken open, and I was like, ‘oh, shit.’ There was blood running down my face and getting in my mouth. Then I was out like a light.” He swallows. It sounds like there’s something caught in his throat. “And then the voices were gone.”

“Was there...was there anyone there to help you? When Eridan attacked you?” Rose asks, hesitation clear in her tone. She can tell by the way Sollux’s face slackens and his expression gets distant that it’s still hard for him to talk about.

“I couldn’t tell who they were. But I saw two people watching from the bushes,” he says, and with that he puts one of his earbuds back in. “I don’t get why you care so much. There’s nothing we can do to fix what happened. I mean, Aradia tells me there’s ‘always a way’ and all that hopeful bullshit, but I’m more of a skeptic myself.”

Rose hears Terezi’s fast footfalls as she approaches the table, followed by the overpowering smell of the fast food. She’s silent as she eats, and mostly quiet after that, but the look Sollux shares with her as he eats could almost be described as relief.

***

Roxy Lalonde prides herself on her intelligence, whether it comes to her hard-earned degrees in computer science and biology or her exclusive knowledge on every  _ Pokémon  _ game cheat in existence. But for once in her life, she’s at a loss for what to do. 

She hadn’t meant to look, honest to God, but Rose had left the scrapbook open after sprinting out the door, and the detailed drawing was enough to make Roxy finally crack down and read it after Calliope departed. An elaborate pencil sketch of a fanged girl with protruding bones and two arching horns stared at up at her from the paper, eerily similar to the one Roxy witnessed in the woods about a week ago. And the notes were only more confusing. One half flowed across the paper in Rose’s curling handwriting, while the responses were written in an almost chicken-scratch, illegible scrawl. Roxy only read the two pages the scrapbook was open to before she closed it, not wanting to further infringe on her daughter’s privacy.

A sudden guilt lodges itself in her throat. She had been keeping the cat experiments from her daughter a secret, and yet here she is looking through Rose’s personal business as if she had a right to it. Roxy leaves the kitchen and heads for her lab. Screwing around with her equipment helps clear her mind, and anyway, she should at least try and do something useful for Rose. It’s the least she can do.

The sample of hair Rose brought her is still in the laboratory for processing and tests. Several cats scurry around under the dim green lights or rub up against Roxy’s legs. She grins and reaches down to pet one while her machine begins processing the sample again. It can be difficult for her to sleep some nights with the way all the cats pile onto her bed, but she loves them all far too much to ever give them away, even if they can never replace Jaspers.

As Roxy observes the sample under the magnifying equipment, she squints at first, then rubs her eyes, and then rubs at them again, no longer caring if she ruins her mascara. There’s no way it’s right. She reloads the machine, but it gives the exact same results.

“What the hell,” Roxy mutters.

The cells have healed. Some were damaged from the beginning, while others were ruined in the occasional procedural mishap, but they’ve doubtless managed to regenerate themselves. The process appears to have stopped now, but it’s nevertheless so startling to Roxy that she has to pinch herself to make sure she’s not dreaming.

Scientifically speaking, none of it makes sense. But the more Roxy thinks about it, the more she thinks of it from a fantastical approach. If this DNA is from the creature she saw in the forest, then she’s dealing with a genetic anomaly unheard of before. And this time, she suspects it has supernatural origins, those not even considered by her except in her old wizard fanfictions.

Roxy pulls out her laptop and sets her fingers on the keys, taking in a deep breath. She might not be the best at providing emotional support for herself, let alone her daughter, but it’s her mission as Rose’s mother to make her happy, one way or another. And if that’s not through feelings, it’ll have to be through research. 

***

When Rose arrives back at home, the sun having already sunk past the hills and plunging the sky into darkness, her mother is sitting at the counter with a laptop in one hand and her research journal on the counter. Rose’s face pales. Laying next to her mother’s journal is her own scrapbook, closed too neatly for her to think she had just left it sitting there. All of a sudden a panic grips her, squeezing her lungs in a vicelike grasp.

“Welcome home, Rose. How’d your group project go? Put any of those ‘dank memes’ in the presentation?” her mother questions, wiggling her eyebrows. Nothing is off about her expression, and her notes don’t appear to have any information pertaining to the Ash Heights case. But Rose still senses a twinge in her gut. It’s a struggle for her to keep her voice calm.

“It was successful. I had dinner there, too, so don’t worry about cooking.”

Rose sets her bag down. Every nerve in her body is on fire, boiling under her skin like magma. Her guts are all seizing up. Her mother must not know. She cannot know. K.M. is her secret and hers to share as she pleases. 

“You left your scrapbook here, by the way,” her mother says. She holds out the scrapbook in one hand, and Rose wants to slap it right out of her palm in pure indignation.

“Did you look through it?” Rose asks coolly. It is the moment of truth. She can hear nothing apart from the blood roaring in her ears and the din of the washing machine upstairs. 

Her mother is silent, but the way she glances down at her lap tells Rose everything.

“You did, didn’t you,” Rose says. She tears the scrapbook from her mother’s hand with ease and stuffs it into her backpack. Her ears are going red, while the blood is draining from the rest of her face. Here is the woman who has hidden God knows how many cats in the laboratory for years, but the moment Rose has a small secret, she just has to intrude.

“It was laying open on the floor,” her mother says defensively. She waves her hands in a sign of apology, guilt written all over her face. “I swear I only saw, like, two pages. No big dealio. I didn’t mean t’ look--”

“You know, I don’t ask for a lot apart from the truth.”

Rose’s mother goes silent.

“But you’re never honest with me,” Rose spits out, her hands already curling into fists. “Let the cats run free, but by all means, don’t tell your daughter why they even exist. That’s fine. That’s perfectly acceptable. And now this _.  _ Snooping through my belongings as if they’re your own. I’ve grown tired of these games,  _ Mother _ .”

“You’re lying too!” Rose mother exclaims, and Rose flinches back. Every hair on her arms stands up.

“I’ve been nothing but candid with you, Mother. There’s nothing more to it, and--”

“No,  _ no, _ ” Rose’s mother interjects. She wipes at her eyes with her free hand and sets the scrapbook down on the counter. “You never told me up until recently you felt like this, Rosie. If I’d known way earlier I could’ve done something, kiddo, but you always acted like everything was all great and dandy. I didn’t know you were upset with me. And now I don’t know what the hell I can even do about it.” Her lips twist into a saddened grimace, the black lipstick smudged and patchy. “I’m sorry. You-- you deserve a better mom.”

Rose stands there silently. The emotions churn in her gut, but her mouth is completely dry. 

“And that’s not the only thing,” Rose’s mother continues quietly. Her words are jumbled but still understandable. “I went into the woods some time ago to think. You seem to like hangin’ out there and all, and-- and then I saw something. Someone.” She looks up from her hands. “Who’s K.M.? Rosie… I feel like this has to do with the DNA sample you asked me to take a look at, and shit, I dunno, I guess I just want an answer. I’ve been trying to be more real with you, even if I do make mistakes sometimes, so I want you to be able to trust me, Rose. You gotta be honest with me too.”

Rose is still quiet. Her hands have dropped to her sides, completely limp. Her secret notes to K.M.-- no one was supposed to know, no one at all, but… She’s not a liar, no, she’s been nothing but honest with her mother. She didn’t lie about how she felt, about how the truth was that she was frustrated and tired and believed that life with her mother was just a series of one-upmanship tactics. She’s not in the wrong. She can’t be. She’s the victim.

Rose finds herself sprinting out the door before her mother can stop her. She flies across the stone pathway in her socks, her path winding and twisting frantically like a bee’s. All the while her heart thuds in her chest like a drum and the wind whistles in her ears. Rose tears down the path and into the woods. Not once does she look back.

By the time she’s made it to the treehouse, Rose is completely winded. She heaves out a sigh and leans up against one of the trees. The moon bores down on her, its light pleasantly familiar amidst the dark shadows in the woods, while the breeze is cool against her skin. She can feel the magma in her veins cooling, hardening, leaving the anger behind in favor of a bitter exhaustion. Rose would like to fall asleep right about now, if only so she would not need to think about her dilemma, but she’s already gone this far from home. It would be best for her to wait a few hours before she returns.

When Rose is thinking too hard and feeling too deeply, one of the best things for her to do is read. She knows she has left herself a few books in the treehouse. It would do her some good to relive the old stories, comforting herself by sinking into the worn pages. Her hand grips the decrepit rope ladder once more as she stares up at the wooden treehouse. It’s been some time since she last climbed up, but Rose still finds it easy for her to hoist herself into the treehouse and sit down, glancing behind herself all the while to make sure her feet aren’t dangling out the entrance.

She turns and freezes. 

An eerily tall, familiar figure stares back at her.

It pains Rose to look at Kanaya. Not because she is ugly, but because Rose has seen what Kanaya looked like before she disappeared, and she appears as if she has crawled through hell itself. Her body is emaciated; the bones protrude just shy of popping out of the skin, and the scars all across her flesh only make her seem more fragile, as if she might fall apart at the slightest touch. She’s clothed in the new black dress Rose had left for her. In one bony hand, the fingernails jagged at the edges, she clutches a needle; in the other is the jade dress, looking more than just simply scratched, but doing surprisingly well.

Kanaya’s mouth drops open, revealing two yellowing fangs among a set of normal teeth. The needle falls from her hand onto wood floor of the treehouse; she hunches even further into herself, but her horns still brush against the ceiling. She stares at Rose like a deer in the headlights, scooting further and further back until she’s backed herself into a corner as far as she can go.

“I won’t hurt you, I promise.” The words leave Rose’s mouth before she can think. “It’s me. R.L. Rose Lalonde. I’ve been leaving you the notes with the sandwiches. Remember?” Rose speaks softly. She reaches a hand out slowly, careful not to startle her newfound friend. If she screws up this second impression, she might never be able to see Kanaya again, and somehow the thought of it hurts her more than it should.

At first Kanaya is frozen, her mouth still agape and her dull green eyes nearly bulging out of her skull. Rose wonders if she will shove her aside to escape via the ladder, or even dive out the window entirely, considering how their first meeting went. But after a moment her shoulders sink, and she extends her hand despite the grime and grit littering the skin. Her gaze never moves from Rose’s face.

Rose still moves with a calculated steadiness, as if approaching a wounded animal, though her breath catches in her throat when her fingers slide over Kanaya’s cool skin and come to clasp her hand in her own. She gives Kanaya’s palm a gentle squeeze, and it takes her a moment to realize she has begun to smile. “It’s alright. I mean you no harm.”

She's never found the truth easier to say.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And in this fic I’ll be pairing Roxy with… *spins wheel* uhhhh Calliope!   
> In all seriousness though, I’ve been excited to introduce her for a while now. She’s going to be important later, though I can’t disclose how, of course. That would ruin the fun!  
> Sorry for this update being a bit on the later side, school’s kept me busy and I was trying to get this chapter just right. Thank you all for your super sweet comments! Every time I read over them I get all happy and aaaaa ;u; <333  
> I’m trying to keep it between 4K and 5K words per chapter so things don’t get too long or too choppy. I’m not sure how close to finished (maybe halfway?) this story is so far but nevertheless I’m super excited to write the upcoming chapters and let shit hit the fan.  
> Thanks for reading!  
> Also sorry about that minor cliffhanger,,, oops


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